Armenian PM Pashinyan resigns to trigger snap election

Nikol Pashinyan calls early election due to criticism over his handling of last year’s Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.

Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, who was swept to power in pro-democracy protests in 2018, has triggered an early election to try to overcome criticism over his handling of last year’s conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh. His resignation on Sunday, which was expected, came a day after US President Joe Biden said that massacres of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire in 1915 constituted genocide, a move welcomed by Armenians worldwide but condemned by Turkey, which denies the killings were systematically orchestrated and amount to genocide. Pashinyan told Biden the symbolic decision was a matter of security to Armenia after the six-week conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh, in which Turkey backed Armenia’s neighbour Azerbaijan, where the ethnic Armenian-populated enclave is located.