A political scandal is brewing in Armenia over an anonymous video message in which masked persons threaten Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan. In response, the head of the government delivered an unprecedentedly harsh speech, promising to find the authors of the video and accusing his main political opponents of organizing the provocation.

The incident started with the publication of a video on social networks, in which unknown persons speaking in the Artsakh dialect, masked their faces, addressed the Prime Minister. They accused the head of the government of deceiving the people, handing over the territories of Nagorno-Karabakh and being ready to cede the sovereign lands of Armenia itself.

The authors of the message stated that they know the movement routes of the politician, accompanying their words with direct threats.

Nikol Pashinyan the response was not late and was heard during one of the pre-election rallies. The prime minister promised in a very tough and emotional way to find out the identity of the persons seen in the video and to bring them to justice.

Using street slang, the head of the government called the video’s authors deserters who left the soldiers alone, and promised to tear off their masks and “take them down”. He called on anonymous persons to voluntarily surrender to law enforcement agencies.

The situation took on an even sharper political tone when the Prime Minister linked the emergence of this video to his main opponents.

Without presenting facts, Pashinyan publicly announced that the supporters of the second and third presidents of the republic, Robert Kocharyan and Serzh Sargsyan, as well as big businessmen Samvel Karapetyan and Gagik Tsarukyan, are behind the masked persons. The head of the government threatened this entire circle with harsh measures.

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