Overview
Serzh Azati Sargsyan (, ; born 30 June 1954) is an Armenian politician who served as the third President of Armenia from 2008 to 2018, and twice as the Prime Minister of Armenia from 2007 to 2008 and again from 17 to 23 April 2018, when he was forced to resign in the 2018 Armenian revolution.
He won the February 2008 presidential election with the backing of the ruling Republican Party of Armenia, a party in which he serves as chairman, and took office in April 2008. On 18 February 2013, he was re-elected as president and served the entire term.
Despite pledging in 2014 not to become prime minister again while supporting an amendment of the constitution in 2015 that would allow it, Sargsyan was again elected prime minister in April 2018, in what opposition figures described as a "power grab". Six days after taking office, Sargsyan resigned after large-scale protests. Sargsyan is currently the leader of the Republican Party, which was the ruling party of Armenia from 1999 to 2018 and is currently represented in parliament as a part of the opposition I Have Honor Alliance.
Early life and career
Serzh Sargsyan (born Serzhik Azati Sargysan) was born on 30 June 1954 in Stepanakert in the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast. He is the son of Azat Avetisi Sargsyan (1929–2013) and Nora Sargsyan․ His father's family hailed from the village of Tegh in the Armenian SSR, and moved to Stepanakert after the arrest of Serzh Sargsyan's grandfather during the 1937 Great Purge. He entered Yerevan State University in 1971 and served in the Soviet Armed Forces in the Ural region from 1971 to 1972. He began his career in 1975 at the Electrical Devices Factory in Yerevan. He graduated from the Philological Department of Yerevan State University in 1979. In 1983, he married his wife, Rita (née Dadayan). In addition to his native Armenian, he is fluent in Russian and also knows Azerbaijani. He is not related to the former Prime Minister of Armenia, Tigran Sargsyan, nor the former President of Armenia Armen Sarkissian.
From Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0).