Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan publicly threatened to imprison and “finish off” the four leading figures of Armenia’s parliamentary opposition during a campaign appearance in Yerevan’s Arabkir district on Monday, after the sister of a forcibly disappeared military doctor approached him and accused him of stealing her homeland. The threats, delivered three weeks before the June 7 parliamentary elections, escalated a campaign already marked by detentions, physical confrontations and what opposition leaders are now describing as the verbal unraveling of a sitting head of government.
The exchange began when Dr. Arpine Soghoyan, an obstetrician-gynecologist and Candidate of Medical Sciences working at Yerevan Polyclinic No. 16, walked up to Pashinyan and told him plainly that he had stolen her homeland. “You have wiped out a whole young generation. You have stolen my brother, my joy. You tried to bring us to our knees, but we have not knelt,” she said. Soghoyan is the sister of Lieutenant Colonel Hrant Papikyan, a military doctor who served in the Armenian Armed Forces’ medical service and remains among the forcibly disappeared from the 2020 war.
Pashinyan responded by turning the confrontation into a list of names. “If you are Rob, I am going to bring Rob to his knees. Rob is going to prison. I am going to finish Rob off” (????????? in Armenian). “I am going to bring the Kaluga man to his knees and finish him off as well. Serzh too. Gago too,” he shouted, referring to former President Robert Kocharyan, Russian-Armenian billionaire Samvel Karapetyan, former President Serzh Sargsyan, and Prosperous Armenia leader Gagik Tsarukyan. “It was Rob who shot citizens of Armenia, not me,” he added. When Soghoyan accused him of ruining the country, Pashinyan replied that the opposition had destroyed it “with Karabakh,” a line widely interpreted as targeting Armenians from Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh).
He then referred to a circulating video showing masked men speaking with an apparent Artsakh accent calling for his overthrow. Pashinyan accused the opposition of being behind the video, calling the men “runaway punks,” “cowards,” and “Rob’s pups, Serzh’s pups, Gago’s pups, the Kaluga man’s pups,” referring to the four opposition leaders.
He threatened to make them kneel and “shove their masks where they belong.” Asked by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty’s Armenian Service whether he had evidence linking the opposition to the video, he said only that “their rhetoric corresponds to the video’s content.” Narek Karapetyan, Samvel Karapetyan’s nephew and head of the Strong Armenia electoral list, has suggested the authorities themselves may have produced the video.
The Arabkir confrontation followed a rally in Davtashen district, where Pashinyan told supporters that Karapetyan, Tsarukyan, Sargsyan and Kocharyan would dream of fleeing Armenia after the elections but would not be allowed to. “The Republic of Armenia will hold them accountable, just as it has been done until now,” he said. He also referenced a May 16 incident in Tashir involving Defense Minister Suren Papikyan, addressing Karapetyan directly: “I told you the state will get stuck in your throat. You will choke on it.” Ten people were detained after Strong Armenia supporters gathered along a Civil Contract motorcade route chanting “Samvel for prime minister.”
The response from the opposition was immediate. The Strong Armenia bloc posted a video of the Arabkir exchange with the line “Armenia needs a real leader.” Tsarukyan said Pashinyan “insults because he has no program.” Kristine Vartanian of the Hayastan alliance said he shows “dictatorial tendencies” and attacks women. Kocharyan has previously called him a moron and questioned his sanity.
By the end of the day, the consequences had reached Soghoyan’s workplace. According to Sputnik Armenia, administrators at Polyclinic No. 16 asked her to submit a resignation letter. She refused. Her daughter, lawyer Tatevik Soghoyan, told Sputnik that the family would pursue legal action if she is dismissed.
Tatevik Soghoyan publicly defended her mother in a social media post. “My mother is the core of my being and the source of motivation for my struggle,” she wrote. “More than anything in the world, I would want to see my mother without her pain.” Identifying her as “today’s hero,” she described her mother as “Arpine Soghoyan, Candidate of Medical Sciences and obstetrician-gynecologist, the sister of Lieutenant Colonel Dr. Hrant Papikyan, who was forcibly disappeared during the 44-day war.” She added that she would later address “the legal and moral dimensions” of the incident and thanked supporters for their solidarity.
Speaking to 24news after the confrontation with Nikol Pashinyan, Soghoyan explained her grief in terms the prime minister’s threats did not reach. “The first outburst of my soul is the loss of my homeland. If I had lost my brother and it had been the loss of a country defeated with dignity, I could have carried this pain more easily. I understand there are winners and losers in war, but losing also has a form. Even in defeat, some dignity is preserved.”
Pashinyan has been confronted by citizens across Armenia during the campaign, often relatives of soldiers killed or missing in the 2020 war and the September 2023 fall of Artsakh. In Metsamor, a mother of one of the fifteen soldiers killed in the January 2023 barracks fire in Gegharkunik’s Azat village blamed him for her son’s death, while supporters chanted “Nikol Prime Minister” to drown her out.
Armenia’s parliamentary elections are scheduled for June 7. Nineteen political forces, including two alliances and seventeen parties, are registered to participate. Campaigning runs from May 8 to June 5.
