As Armenia Approaches Peace Agreement with Azerbaijan, Yerevan Becomes Scene of Protests

Nikol Pashinyan, the Prime Minister of Armenia, stated on Wednesday that the drafting of a peace treaty with Azerbaijan will soon be finalized, but his country will not accept Baku's request to amend its constitution. Following these statements, clashes erupted between police forces and government opponents in Armenia who are protesting Pashinyan's policies, including the return of destroyed villages to Azerbaijan. Reports from Yerevan indicate that police forces are throwing stun grenades at protesters gathered around the Armenian parliament. The protesters then moved towards the Armenian government building and eventually dispersed. Russian news agencies reported that 17 police officers were injured in these clashes. The Armenian Ministry of Internal Affairs also announced that 76 civilians were injured and 98 were arrested. According to the Armenian service of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Archbishop Bagrat Galstanyan, the leader of the opposition in Armenia, told protesters that he had requested a meeting with Pashinyan to negotiate about the 'conditions for his peaceful resignation.' The Armenian news website CivilNet quoted Pashinyan as saying that the peace treaty with Azerbaijan has been drafted and only needs some amendments to be signed. Both Armenia and Azerbaijan have repeatedly expressed their determination to sign a peace treaty with each other to end one of the longest conflicts of the former Soviet Union, which began in the late 1980s over the Nagorno-Karabakh region. In September 2023, Azerbaijan regained control of Nagorno-Karabakh, effectively ending the region's de facto independence from Baku that had been established in the early 1990s, and subsequently forced the entire Armenian population there to flee to Armenia. Since then, both sides have been negotiating a peace treaty and determining their common 1,000-kilometer border, which is currently closed and where military forces are stationed. Last month, after a long pause in peace negotiations, Armenia returned four villages to Azerbaijan that it had controlled since the early 1990s, thus removing a significant obstacle in the negotiations. Meanwhile, Ilham Aliyev, the President of Azerbaijan, has called for changes to Armenia's constitution to remove indirect references to Nagorno-Karabakh's independence. CivilNet quoted Pashinyan on Wednesday stating that insisting on constitutional changes indicates an attempt to undermine the peace process. However, he still expressed optimism about the prospects for an agreement.