Armenia Opposition starts Save Motherland Movement

MOSCOW, Dec 22 (Sputnik) Armenia’s opposition, which is calling for the resignation of Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, plans to hold mass protests on Tuesday, the Movement to Save the Motherland announced on Facebook. According to the opposition movement, a nationwide strike, as well as various demonstrations are planned for December 22.
According to representative of the Supreme Body of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation, also known as Dashnaktsutyun political party, Ishkhan Saghatelyan, mass protest action will be organized by the opposition across the country on Tuesday and demonstrators plan to gather around the government building in Republic Square in Yerevan, the capital of Armenia.
Protests have been ongoing in Armenia since last month, when Pashinyan agreed to a ceasefire that many Armenians interpreted as defeat in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. Dozens of opposition parties have united behind calls for Pashinyan to step down. In November, Pashinyan and the president of Azerbaijan, Ilham Aliyev, signed a new ceasefire deal, brokered by Russian President Vladimir Putin, after weeks of hostilities in the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh.
Under the agreement, Azerbaijan retains control of the territories it captured during the conflict, while Russia is deploying peacekeepers along the line of contact of the warring parties and in the Lachin Corridor connecting Nagorno-Karabakh with Armenia. Armenia also agreed to hand over all the Azeri-majority buffer territories surrounding Nagorno-Karabakh which have been under its de facto control since 1994.