On June 12, Levon Ter-Petrosyan, the first President of Armenia, criticized Nikol Pashinyan, questioning, “If the Armenian people defeated the powerful Russian emperor, who is this traitor and blasphemer Nikol that he cannot be defeated?”
Ter-Petrosyan recalled that in 1903, Russian Emperor Nicholas II enacted a law confiscating the property of the Armenian Church and closing Armenian schools.
He emphasized that this law provoked widespread protest and resistance across Armenian society, which unintentionally fueled Armenian nationalism so strongly that by 1905, the emperor was compelled to repeal the law.