Yerkrapah
Yerkrapah Volunteer Union or Yerkrapah Union of Veterans, meaning Defenders of the Land, is an Armenian non-governmental group that consisted of 6,000 veterans of the First Nagorno-Karabakh War, formed by Vazgen Sargsyan. The Yerkrapah is a large and influential veteran group. The Yerkrapah Union was actively involved in the First Nagorno-Karabakh War, although after the death of Sargsyan, Yerkrapah's influence in Armenian politics began to decline. Yerkrapah had incorporated between 5,000 and 30,000 veterans. According to Thomas de Waal, after 1994 "the veterans' group Yerkrapah became the most powerful organization in the country."
Military operations
Yerkrapah serves as part the reserve of the army. It sent thousands of armed volunteers fight during the April War of 2016, as well as the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War of 2020.Political involvement
By 1998, the Yerkrapah parliamentary faction, led by Vazgen Sargsyan as "the power behind the throne", was the largest faction in the National Assembly. The faction was made up of members of the union. That summer, merged with the Republican Party of Armenia, absorbing the much smaller party in name and legal status. Yerkrapah as a political movement lost their nominal political influence by 2001.On 25 February 2008, a cohort of top army leaders led by the then-Chief of the General Staff Seyran Ohanyan left the Yerkrapah Union, protesting against its involvement in politics. The move came after the deputy chairman Myasnik Malkhasyan and some other members gave their backing to ex-president Levon Ter-Petrosyan in the protests following the disputed 2008 Armenian presidential election. Then-Yerkrapah chairman and deputy defense minister Manvel Grigoryan also supposedly met with Ter-Petrosyan, who claimed that he had Grigoryan's support.
In 2019, Chairman Sasun Mikayelyan insisted that the organization shall not serve as an 'appendage" of the ruling party, warning of consequences of what happened when the previous governments "tried to make Yerkrapah serve the authorities".