Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan responded to the arrest of businessman Samvel Karapetyan with a pointed comment on his official Facebook page: “This is not Nizhni Tapri village of Kaluga. This is the Republic of Armenia. I hope you’ll remember the taste of statehood,” he wrote.

The remark came in direct response to Karapetyan’s public defense of the Armenian Apostolic Church and criticism of a group he accused of attacking national religious heritage.

Earlier in the day, Karapetyan had stated: “A small group, forgetting Armenian history and the church’s millennia of legacy, attacked the Armenian Church and the Armenian people. I have always stood by the Armenian Church and our people. If politicians cannot succeed, we will intervene in our own way in defense of the Church,” as reported by http://News.am .

Artur Hovhannisyan, secretary of the ruling “Civil Contract” parliamentary faction, had previously warned Karapetyan in Parliament that “his issues would be handled institutionally.”