URGENT! Kocharyan while fleeing the country detained at the airport

The mass public protests and internal political chaos ignited around the official results of the extraordinary parliamentary elections concluded in Armenia have left the country's former elite in a desperate situation. While news suggests that the situation in the capital Yerevan could spiral out of control at any moment, sensational information has been released about one of the main figures of the revanchist forces.

Medianews.az reports that Robert Kocharyan, Armenia's second president and one of the opposition bloc leaders, was detained by law enforcement agencies while trying to urgently leave the country from Yerevan's "Zvartnots" International Airport. At the border-crossing checkpoint, the former state leader’s documents were blocked, and his departure from the country was categorically denied.

The investigation and security agencies have so far avoided giving an official statement regarding the specific legal grounds for the former president's detention and whether it is related to a criminal case. Another noteworthy behind-the-scenes aspect is that just a few hours before this incident, Robert Kocharyan’s official office announced that he would be traveling abroad for three days. Although the former president’s team claimed in their statement that this sudden trip was entirely personal in nature, the Armenian media immediately exposed that he was attempting to escape the critical political situation in the country and a possible wave of arrests.

It should be noted that in recent days, a highly critical political and military tension has been observed in Armenia around the final figures of the parliamentary elections that ended with Nikol Pashinyan’s victory. Opposition forces, which besieged the Central Election Commission building, claimed that the voting had been massively rigged and announced that they were starting a civil disobedience movement in the country. The authorities, on the other hand, stated that the election results were fully legal and warned that strict measures would be taken against radical opposition leaders attempting to undermine internal stability and stage a coup d’état.