Armenian businessman and philanthropist Samvel Karapetyan has issued a stark warning ahead of the June 7 parliamentary elections, pledging that his Strong Armenia party will act decisively to prevent large-scale Azerbaijani settlement in the country.

Speaking during a live broadcast on Monday, Karapetyan claimed that Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev were planning to allow 300,000 Azerbaijanis to enter Armenia. 

He argued that such a development would weaken the country’s economic future, stating: “If we cannot stop this, our economic programs will be impossible to implement, since the main jobs will go to Azerbaijanis.”

Karapetyan said that, if elected, his Strong Armenia party’s first legislative initiative would be the introduction of a “Safarov Prevention Law.” According to him, the proposed law would ban Azerbaijani citizens from purchasing or acquiring land and property in Armenia.

The proposal references Ramil Safarov, an Azerbaijani officer convicted of murdering an Armenian soldier in Hungary in 2004 who was later pardoned in Azerbaijan.