Serzh Sargsyan §

Serzh Sargsyan was a Karabakh-born Armenian security official who became president of Armenia from 2008 to 2018. He rose through the Nagorno-Karabakh defence structures, then held senior posts in Armenia including interior, national security and defence portfolios. As part of the Karabakh-linked elite around Robert Kocharyan, he opposed Ter-Petrosyan's 1997 phased settlement and later inherited the presidency after the disputed 2008 election, whose aftermath produced the 1 March deaths in Yerevan. His presidency combined negotiated engagement, including the Zurich Protocols with Turkey, with a security-first Karabakh policy and Republican Party consolidation. The 2015 constitutional shift to a parliamentary system and his 2018 move into the prime ministership triggered the Velvet Revolution. His fall marked the end of the post-1998 ruling system but not the end of its unresolved security inheritance.