OREANDA-NEWS. Armenian Defense Minister David Tonoyan has resigned, the newspaper Aravot writes. According to the publication, he will be replaced by Vagharshak Harutiunyan, chief military adviser to the Prime Minister of the country, who served as the head of the Ministry of Defense from 1999 to 2000.

From 1978 to 1990, Harutiunyan served in the Far East of the Soviet Union. In the early 1990s he returned to Armenia and began work in the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the Ministry of Defense. In 2002, he joined the opposition Republican Party, after which then President Robert Kocharyan stripped him of his military rank. He was reinstated in the rank of lieutenant general in 2019, after Nikol Pashinyan became Prime Minister.

Earlier, Foreign Minister Zohrab Mnatsakanyan and a number of other officials in the Armenian government had already resigned. The opposition demands the resignation of Pashinyan amid the signing of an agreement to end the fighting in Nagorno-Karabakh. The Prime Minister, although he admitted responsibility for what happened, refuses to leave his post.