Hundreds of protesters forced their way into a government building in Yerevan amid a deepening political crisis triggered by Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan’s handling of last year’s war with Azerbaijan.
Anti-government protests calling for the resignation of Former Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan have been ongoing in Armenia since the country's defeat in the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh war.
On 25 February 2021, Armenian Chief of the General Staff of the Armenian Armed Forces Onik Gasparyan said in a statement signed by 40 top officers that Pashinyan and the government “are no longer able to make proper decisions in this fateful moment of crisis for the Armenian people”, adding that their demand was triggered by Pashinyan's dismissal of the first deputy chief of the General Staff Tiran Khachatryan a day earlier.
Pashinyan responded to the statement by calling it an attempted military coup and called on his allies to gather in the capital Yerevan’s main Republic Square.