Armenian police have made more than 200 arrests after tens of thousands of protesters joined countrywide demonstrations calling for Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan to step down, a dpa correspondent in Yerevan reported on Monday.
The demonstrators blocked streets in many locations, accusing Pashinyan of making territorial concessions to neighbouring Azerbaijan to secure a peace treaty.
The protests, which have been running for weeks, are being led by Bagrat Galstanyan, archbishop of the Tavush diocese in north-eastern Armenia.
Galstanyan has recently emerged as a vocal opponent of Pashinyan. He called for protesters to block roads on Monday and joined the protests himself, blocking an intersection in the centre of Yerevan with his own car.
Pashinyan has encountered popular opposition since Armenia abandoned the mountainous Nagorno-Karabakh region in Azerbaijan, prompting the largely Armenian population to flee. Nagorno-Karabakh broke away from Azerbaijan with the assistance of the Armenian government in the 1990s.
Oil-rich Azerbaijan retook part of the region during a brief war in 2020, and in a further offensive in September last year took full control. Almost the entire Armenian population of around 120,000 fled to Armenia.
Azerbaijan, which enjoys Turkish support, also lays claim to border regions in Armenia, which lacks Azerbaijan's economic and military resources.
Pashinyan recently surrendered four border villages in order to secure a peace treaty. This led to strong opposition to his government in Armenia.