Two protesters in Yerevan were detained after a conflict with the parliament speaker.

Police detained two protesters outside the Armenian parliament following an altercation with National Assembly Speaker Alen Simonyan. Simonyan accused the detainees of deliberately provoking them.

As reported by "Caucasian Knot," relatives of Armenian servicemen regularly hold protests demanding the fate of those missing. On March 8, for example, the mothers of servicemen once again demanded that their sons be found at a protest outside the Armenian government building. On March 24, relatives of the fallen and missing soldiers demanded that the Armenian parliament publish the report of the commission that investigated the circumstances of the 44-day war.

Activist Mikael Margaryan and Pan-Armenian Front party member Arsen Vardanyan were detained by police after a verbal conflict with Armenian Parliament Speaker Alen Simonyan in central Yerevan, Aysor.am reported.

Arsen Ghukasyan, a relative of a missing soldier, reported the detention of the activists on Demirchyan Street near the National Assembly building. The incident occurred during a protest by the families of dead and missing soldiers - they have been coming to parliament since March 24 and continue to demand the publication of a report on the Second Karabakh War.

The Armenian Ministry of Internal Affairs confirmed that two people were taken to the Arabkir police station in Yerevan from Demirchyan Street following the incident, Armenia Today reports.

According to footage from the scene, Mikael Adamyan approached Alen Simonyan as he passed near the protesters and attempted to strike up a conversation. The conversation quickly escalated into an altercation with obscene language, after which Simonyan ordered security to "take" the activist. The missing soldier's uncle, Arsen Ghukasyan, intervened after these words, and the situation "escalated even further," according to the Chronicles of Armenia Telegram channel.

Ghukasyan's lawyer, Tatevik Soghoyan, stated that the speaker of parliament provoked the conflict by first insulting Adamyan. According to her, Simonyan used an expression referring to the activist's father, and Adamyan responded with obscene language.

Alen Simonyan himself, in a statement on his Facebook page*, claims that he did not use obscene language or "sexual insults" towards Adamyan. According to the speaker, he approached the parents of the missing persons on his own initiative to listen to their outrage and spoke with activists, after which a "man named Mika" (Adamyan) approached him with a camera.

Simonyan claims that the blogger is well known to him for his online activities and often published provocative videos about him. "I had no desire to interact with him in any way, and I suggested that he stay as far away from me as possible. I may have expressed myself more rudely as he continued to approach, but there were no sexual insults (...) After that, he uttered sexual insults towards me, which can be seen in the video. I responded to him and tried to leave," Armenpress quotes the speaker as saying.

The parliament speaker added that he "experienced a series of provocations on Demirchyan Street." The man who approached him after his exchange of insults with Adamyan was a stranger; he defended Adamyan as if he were a friend. "Then it turned out he was the leader of some party," Simonyan said. Then, he said, he was approached by "another citizen who acted according to the same logic."