Armenia’s Prime Minister, Nikol Pashinyan, has dismissed Liparit Drmeyan, the head of the Office of the Representative for International Legal Affairs. This move follows a public statement by the Prime Minister that Armenia will not comply with an emergency ruling from the Stockholm Arbitration Tribunal. The ruling had ordered Armenia to halt any actions to seize “Electric Networks of Armenia.”

The controversy centers on the Electricity Networks of Armenia (ENA), the country’s sole power distributor owned by Russian-Armenian billionaire Samvel Karapetyan. In June 2025, shortly after Karapetyan publicly backed the Armenian Apostolic Church, he was jailed on chargesof calling for the government’s overthrow. Parliament then rushed through a law enabling ENA’s takeover, allowing regulators to strip its license and appoint state administrators without court approval. Critics see the move as retaliation, warning it could trigger costly arbitration and further erode Armenia’s investment climate.

In a press conference, Pashinyan stated that any government official who disagrees with his stance on the matter should resign. “I am the government … no one can have a position that contradicts my position,” he said. “If there are people in the government who have a stance that contradicts my own, they should write their resignation and leave the buildings immediately, and if not, I will remove them myself.”