Armenian premier fighting independent institutions in Armenia to  strengthen his power - UAR

ArmInfo.The criminal prosecution of Catholicos of All Armenians Garegin II is aimed at  replacing him with a crony of Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, stated Ara Abrahamyan, President of the Union of Armenians of Russia.

"Pashinyan is now ready to do anything to reassert his power after  the June elections," Abrahamyan believes. "By persecuting church  hierarchs, and now the Supreme Patriarch and Catholicos of All  Armenians under false pretexts, he wants to replace them with his  puppets, a crony Catholicos who carries out his will and campaigns  for him." The head of the Union of Armenians of Russia added that  Pashinyan is fighting independent institutions in Armenia to  strengthen his power, and that is precisely why he is fighting the  Church. Abrahamyan recalled that the Armenian Apostolic Church is  "almost 1,700 years older than the so-called fourth republic that  Pashinyan wants to proclaim."

"The <real Armenia> he claims, within the 29,743,000 square  kilometers, unites between 2.5 and 3 million Armenians, while the  Armenian Church unites the entire Armenian people scattered  throughout the world, over 10 million people," the president of the  Union of Armenians of Russia noted, according to reports.

On February 14, it was reported that the Prosecutor General's Office  of Armenia had opened a criminal case against the Catholicos of All  Armenians for failing to comply with a court order filed by the  defrocked priest Arman Saroyan.

He has been placed on bail. Similar charges were previously brought  against six members of the Supreme Spiritual Council and the  Council's secretary. Lawyer Ara Zohrabyan expressed his conviction  that these actions by the Armenian authorities are aimed at  disrupting the Supreme Spiritual Council, scheduled to take place  from February 16-19 in Austria. It is also noteworthy that the case  was opened a day after Nikol Pashinyan announced that he would not  allow the Catholicosate to leave Armenia.

He recalled that the Armenian Apostolic Church is also a subject of  international relations, as it operates in many countries around the  world, is a member of numerous international church organizations,  and has financial and organizational mobilization capabilities  independent of Pashinyan.