Serzh Sargsyan

Former President and Prime Minister of Armenia

Serzh Azati Sargsyan (, ; born 30 June 1954) is an Armenian politician who served as the third President of Armenia from 2008 to 2018, and twice as the Prime Minister of Armenia from 2007 to 2008 and again from 17 to 23 April 2018, when he was forced to resign in the 2018 Armenian revolution. He won the February 2008 presidential election with the backing of the ruling Republican Party of Armenia, a party in which he serves as chairman, and took office in April 2008. On 18 February 2013, he was re elected as president and served the entire term. Despite pledging in 2014 not to become prime minister again while supporting an amendment of the constitution in 2015 that would allow it, Sargsyan was again elected prime minister in April 2018, in what opposition figures described as a "power grab". Six days after taking office, Sargsyan resigned after large scale protests. Sargsyan is currently the leader of the Republican Party, which was the ruling party of Armenia from 1999 to 2018 and is currently represented in parliament as a part of the opposition I Have Honor Alliance.

Serzh Sargsyan (born Serzhik Azati Sargysan) was born on 30 June 1954 in Stepanakert in the Nagorno Karabakh Autonomous Oblast. He is the son of Azat Avetisi Sargsyan (1929–2013) and Nora Sargsyan․ His father's family hailed from the village of Tegh in the Armenian SSR, and moved to Stepanakert after the arrest of Serzh Sargsyan's grandfather during the 1937 Great Purge. He entered Yerevan State University in 1971 and served in the Soviet Armed Forces in the Ural region from 1971 to 1972. He graduated from the Philological Department of Yerevan State University in 1979. In 1983, he married his wife, Rita (née Dadayan). He is not related to the former Prime Minister of Armenia, Tigran Sargsyan, who served under him, nor to his successor as President Armen Sarkissian.

Starting in 1979, Sargsyan held several positions in the Stepanakert Komsomol Committee: first as division head, then second secretary and first secretary (his long time political ally Robert Kocharyan served as his deputy). He then became the Stepanakert City Committee Propaganda Division Head, the Nagorno Karabakh Regional Committee Communist Organizations' Unit Instructor, and finally became assistant to Genrikh Poghosyan, the First Secretary of the Nagorno Karabakh Regional Committee. In January 1992, when the first government of the Nagorno Karabakh Republic (NKR) was formed with Oleg Yesayan as prime minister, Sargsyan was appointed head of the Defense Committee, a position he held until the dissolution of the government in August 1992. The proposal envisioned the return of most of the Armenian occupied territories surrounding Nagorno Karabakh to Azerbaijan in exchange for security guarantees, but left the final resolution of the status of Nagorno Karabakh for future negotiations. From 1999 to 2000 he served as the Chief of Staff for President Robert Kocharyan, and then served once again as the Defense Minister of Armenia from 2000 to 2007. The 2008 Presidential election was hailed as largely democratic by OSCE, the European Union (EU) and Western monitors. Ter Petrosyan's supporters, disputing the official results, held large protests in Yerevan for over a week following the election, until they were violently broken up on 1 March; ten people (eight protestors and two police officers) were killed, and a state of emergency was imposed for 20 days, ending on 20 March 2008.

Major protests against Sargsyan's regime began in 2011, with the president's 2008 rival Levon Ter Petrosyan at their helm. In a concession to protesters, Sargsyan said on 20 April 2011 that the government would recommit to a thorough investigation of the post election violence of three years prior. In July 2016, thousands of Armenians protested in the capital Yerevan in support of the "Daredevils of Sasun," an armed group that stormed police headquarters in Yerevan and took hostages while calling for the release of all political prisoners and the resignation of president Serzh Sargsyan. The National Security Service of Armenia called the takeover (which resulted in the deaths of three policemen) a terrorist attack, but a growing number of Armenians disagreed with that assessment. The continuing protests were eventually successful in pressuring Sargsyan. On 23 April, Pashinyan was released from detention and Sargsyan announced his resignation. Former Prime Minister Karen Karapetyan succeeded Sargsyan as acting Prime Minister.

Sargsyan has been under criminal prosecution within the scope of a criminal case on embezzlement. The Special Investigative Service of Armenia on 4 December 2019, has brought embezzlement charges against Sargsyan, particularly for the organization of the embezzlement of half a billion AMD within the scope of the state program on assisting farmers to obtain diesel fuel on affordable price in 2013. In January 2020, based on sufficient evidence collected, the Special Investigative Service has indicted Sargsyan for embezzlement on especially large scale (AMD ֏489,160,310) and the criminal case with the indictment has been handed to the prosecutor supervising the case for approval and sending it to court.

In 1983, he married his wife, Rita Sargsyan née Dadayan, with whom he has two daughters, Anush and Satenik. They have two granddaughters, Mariam and Rita, and two grandsons, Ara and Serzh. Sargsyan has two younger brothers: Alexander (Sashik), a businessman and former member of Armenia's parliament, and Levon, a diplomat and professor at Yerevan State University.

Other transcriptions of his given name are Serge and Serj, of the surname Sarkissian, Sarkisyan, Sargsyan, Sarkissyan, the transliteration is Serž Azati Sargsyan (see Romanization of Armenian). His name during the Soviet era was Russified as Serzh Azatovich Sargsyan (Серж Аза́тович Саргся́н).