Armenian parliament opposition MPs have declared today’s ratification of a natural gas treaty with Russia as invalid.

HAK MP Levon Zurabyan told demonstrators outside the National Assembly that the ratification vote needed to be certified by a special committee in which the opposition has four members.

Parliamentary procedure requires this given that the vote was by hand and not via electronic balloting.

Zurabyan called the vote a ‘fraud’, arguing that it couldn’t be deemed legal since all op[position MPs had walked out of the chamber.

Heritage Party MP Zarouhie Postanjyan called on the demonstrators to organize ‘protest cell’ throughout the country and continue the struggle against the gas deal.