Stepan Asatrian had first made such a statement in 2020. He stood by it on Thursday in comments to journalists.
“To be honest, I still want a leader like Kadyrov, and I don't think it's wrong,” he said. “Do you think Kadyrov is a dictator? Can you say the same thing in Chechnya? The people of Chechnya love him very much.”
The remarks drew ridicule from opposition lawmakers and other critics of the Armenian government. They said that in his efforts to depose Catholicos Garegin II, the supreme head of the Armenian Apostolic Church, Pashinian is relying on someone who reveres a strong ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Pashinian regularly brands his political foes as Russian agents.
“If I spoke in your vocabulary, I would call [Asatrian] a great Russian slave,” Anna Grigorian, a parliament deputy from the opposition Hayastan, told the pro-government majority in the National Assembly on Friday.
“Why are you speaking negatively about the head of the country?” countered parliament speaker Alen Simonian. “Is there something bad about Kadyrov?”
Kadyrov, 49, has ruled the Russian North Caucasus region with an iron fist for nearly two decades. He has faced international outcry amid reports of human rights abuses, including torture, unlawful arrest, disappearances and extrajudicial killings. The U.S. State Department sanctioned Kadyrov in 2020 for his “involvement in gross violations of human rights.”
Asatrian spoke to journalists at the Hovanavank monastery 30 kilometers northwest of Yerevan as he continued to defy the defrocking order issued by the leadership of the church on Tuesday. Shouting threats and insults, a group of his aggressive supporters forced a delegation of other priests to leave the medieval monastery. They also harassed and swore at the journalists, among them an RFE/RL crew.
The defrocked priest reaffirmed plans to hold on Sunday a mass that will be attended by Pashinian. The church’s Supreme Spiritual Council on Friday condemned Pashinian for assisting in Asatrian's “soul-destroying initiative to organize an event under the name of a liturgy.”
