Serzh Sargsyan

Biography

Serzh Sargsyan was born in Stepanakert, in Soviet Nagorno-Karabakh, in 1954. He studied philology at Yerevan State University, graduating in 1979 after army service, and worked at an electrical devices factory before moving into Komsomol and Communist Party posts in Stepanakert.

From 1989 he took part in the Karabakh Armenian national movement, organising the region's defence during the First Nagorno-Karabakh War. In independent Armenia he served as defence minister (1993-1995 and 2000-2007), minister of national security and of the interior, and chief of staff to President Robert Kocharyan. In 1998 he was among the officials who forced President Levon Ter-Petrosyan to resign over a Karabakh peace plan.

Appointed prime minister in April 2007, he won the February 2008 presidential election; opposition protests over the result were broken up on 1 March with ten deaths. He was re-elected in 2013. As president he leads the Republican Party of Armenia and promoted a 2015 constitutional change moving power to the prime minister.

When parliament made him prime minister in April 2018 after his presidency ended, mass street protests accused him of clinging to power, and he resigned after six days. He has since led the Republican Party in opposition and faced criminal prosecution.