YEREVAN: Armenia’s Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said Wednesday that the security forces had foiled a coup plot involving a senior cleric, the latest twist in his escalating conflict with the powerful Apostolic Church.
Pashinyan has been at loggerheads with the Church since its head, Catholicos Garegin II, began calling for his resignation following Armenia’s disastrous 2020 military defeat to arch-foe Azerbaijan over the then-disputed Karabakh region.
The dispute escalated after Baku seized full control of the region in 2023. Pashinyan started pushing an unpopular peace deal with Azerbaijan that would essentially renounce Yerevan’s claims to a region many Armenians see as their ancestral homeland.
“Law enforcement officers have foiled a large-scale and sinister plan by the ‘criminal-oligarchic clergy’ to destabilize the situation in the Republic of Armenia and seize power,” Pashinyan wrote on his Telegram channel early Wednesday.
The authorities arrested Archbishop Bagrat Galstanyan, a charismatic senior church figure trying to rally opposition to Pashinyan, accusing him of trying to mastermind the attempted coup.
