Karen Karapetyan calls for soberness, vigilance amid escalated Yerevan protests

Amid the ongoing protests in Armenia, First Deputy PM Karen Karapetyan has called on everyone for soberness and vigilance.

Asked by reporters at a Sunday press briefing about the solution of the situation, the First Deputy PM said: “First of all, as a citizen of Armenia, not as Deputy Prime Minister, I call on everyone to be sober, to be vigilant, to speak about this within families. For example, they are involving 12-year-old children in these political games, would you want your 12-year-old children to take part in these games? This is unacceptable for me. Let’s be sober and vigilant, respect each other, listen to each other, call on each other to sit down and talk. We will appear in a ridiculous situation.

According to Karapetyan, when a large crowd gathers it is difficult to be managed, that crowd is not homogenous, people which other purposes can appear within that crowd.

“I don’t want to anyhow offend someone who thinks that he is fair and has entered [the crowd] with troubled tendencies for the country. I mean that criminal elements can also exist. Today, special services of the external enemy can provoke and we all, who are making decisions, must in addition to boldness and decisiveness have responsibility, understand that this can lead to tragedy, and how are we going to deal with it later, how are we gonna look in each other’s eyes?”.