Thousands of Armenians staged an anti-government protest on Sunday, demanding Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan’s resignation over territorial concessions to arch-foe neighbour Azerbaijan.

Protests erupted in the Caucasus nation last month after the government agreed to hand over territory it had controlled since the 1990s.

The ceded territory is strategically important for landlocked Armenia because it controls sections of a vital highway to Georgia.

Armenian residents of nearby settlements say the move cuts them off from the rest of the country and accuse Mr Pashinyan of giving away territory without getting anything in return.

On Friday, in a key step toward normalising ties between the rivals – who fought two wars over the then-disputed Nagorno Karabakh region – Yerevan returned four border villages it seized decades ago to Azerbaijan.

An AFP reporter said several thousand people flooded Yerevan’s central Republic Square in a fresh protest spearheaded by charismatic archbishop Bagrat Galstanyan, a church leader from the Tavush region, where villages were handed over to Azerbaijan.

Mr Pashinyan defended the territorial concessions as aimed at securing peace with Baku. But they sparked weeks of protests and demonstrators blocked major roads in an attempt to force him to change course.

Mr Galstanyan is seeking to launch an impeachment process against Mr Pashinyan, a former journalist who was propelled to power in the wake of peaceful street protests he led in 2018.

Opposition parties would require the support of at least one independent or ruling party MP to launch the impeachment process and success would then hinge on at least 18 lawmakers from Mr Pashinyan’s own party voting to unseat the leader.

Last year, Azerbaijan recaptured Karabakh in a lightning offensive against Armenian separatists who had held sway over the mountainous enclave for three decades.

The region’s entire Armenian population – more than 100,000 people – fled to Armenia in the aftermath.