Deputy Speaker of the National Assembly of Armenia Lena Nazaryan stated the following in an interview with CIVILNET:

“Yesterday’s events took place after the General Staff of the Armed Forces issued its political statement, and I believe that, in this situation, both the ruling party and the opposition have to take action and responsibility. However, the ruling party took a step forward by offering to hold discussions to resolve all these issues, and one of the steps can be the holding of snap parliamentary elections. The opposition, including parliamentary and extra-parliamentary forces, have declined the offer. If the opposition doesn’t accept the fact that this is a path to solving the problem, there is a risk that the opposition may hold assemblies and demonstrations even after the elections. The opposition needs to agree that the elections need to be peaceful, free, fair and transparent,” Nazaryan said.

According to Nazaryan, the opposition doesn’t want to go to snap elections since its only interest is the non-existence of the incumbent authorities, not what the people want.

“The forces leading the people to squares must have the desire to solve the situation. The way I see it, they don’t want to solve the situation or ask what the people want. They simply don’t want the incumbent authorities to exist, but our existence isn’t an end in itself. There is another group that says we need to exist because they link the continuation of certain processes to us. They have demands and expectations from us. We offer the most constructive way to solve the situation, that is, snap elections. The Prime Minister invited the forces to discussions, but there can be other paths. Whereas their offer is resignation, our offer is elections,” Nazaryan said.

According to Lena Nazaryan, Armenia-Russia relations haven’t been affected by Nikol Pashinyan’s statement about the Iskander since statements can’t harm the fundamental and longstanding cooperation.