Thousands of people gathered in the Freedom Square in the center of Yerevan, many holding the poster “Nicholas the Traitor”.
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“Who are you to give our lands? You had no right to do so,” said Arthur Beglaryan, who was wounded in battle in Karabakh, speaking on a loudspeaker.
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“Our soldiers fought heroically,” said the wheelchair-born Beglarjan, addressing the protesters.
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“The person who signed the agreement has no right to live in our country,” said Vardan Voskanyan, a spokesman for the opposition Dzimtene party. “We need a leader who will change this shameful deal for the better.”
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On Friday, Armenian courts released ten prominent opposition politicians accused of causing unrest following Pashinyan’s statement on the ceasefire agreement.
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The prosecutor’s office has accused these politicians, including Gagik Carukyan, the leader of the Booming Armenia party, and Ishan Sagateyan, the leader of the Dashnak party, of causing “illegal, violent riots”.
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Politicians were arrested on Thursday and face up to ten years in prison, but politicians’ lawyers said their clients had been released because the court ruled there were no grounds to detain them.
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The Nagorno-Karabakh ceasefire agreement of 9 November stipulates that the Armenian and Azerbaijani armies will remain in the final stages of the escalation of the conflict, which means that the southern part of Nagorno-Karabakh’s main territory and the entire southern buffer zone will remain under Azerbaijani control.
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All Armenian-controlled areas of the security buffer zone must also be handed over to Azerbaijan by 1 December.
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Part of the main territory of Nagorno-Karabakh has been under Azerbaijani control since the 1990s war.
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On Wednesday, Pashinyan explained that together with the leaders of Russia and Azerbaijan, he had adopted a tripartite statement on the ceasefire in Nagorno-Karabakh in order to avoid a complete collapse, siege and death of thousands of Armenian soldiers in the region.
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Intense fighting resumed in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict on September 27.
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There have been hostile relations between Azerbaijan and Armenia since the 1990s, when there was a war over Nagorno-Karabakh, a predominantly Armenian population.
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Nagorno-Karabakh, which was part of the Azerbaijani SSR during the Soviet era, has been a “de facto” independent Armenian republic since the early 1990s. Although Azerbaijan did not control Nagorno-Karabakh since the collapse of the USSR, it considered the Armenian region to be its territory. Nagorno-Karabakh is also considered by the international community to be part of Azerbaijan, and no country has recognized the region as an independent state.
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