On 1 July, tensions escalated between civil activists, the residents of Jermuk town, and the Armenian police at the checkpoint nearby Amulsar gold mine, reported news.am.

The trigger for these tensions was an agreement that was reached a day prior which foresaw that the staff of Amulsar's new security organization leave the area, and only those who are on duty remain, but this staff has not left yet.

The residents of Jermuk were demanding not only the staff of this security organization leave, but that they also remove their cars. The head of Amulsar’s security service said that the agreement was in force, they would follow it during the day, but they just needed some time to find houses for rent in Jermuk so that their employees could stay there. An agreement has not yet been reached on removing the cars.

Earlier, on 5 May, the United Kingdom-based independent media platform “Open Democracy” (OD) reported on an internal report of the EU delegation to Armenia. The report outlined that Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan has been under pressure from the different stakeholders, including US and UK governments over the Amulsar standoff. It remarked that Pashinyan was weighing environmental considerations against the economic benefits of the Amulsar project in a mining industry which had a ‘notoriously poor’ environmental protection record (Caucasus Watch reported).  

On 20 August 2019, Pashinyan declared his intention to allow the Anglo-American company Lydian to restart the gold mining project after the Lebanese company ELARD published their report stating that underground water at Amulsar would not have physical “connections” with mineral water sources in Jermuk or rivers and canals flowing into Sevan. Pashinyan’s decision was still not backed by the residents of Jermuk, environmentalists and some opposition lawmakers, sparking protests in the village of Jermuk (Caucasus Watch reported). On 4 September, the Armenian Ministry of Environment submitted the report regarding the environmental impact of the Amulsar gold mine project. According to Vladimir Karapetyan, the Prime Minister of Armenia’s spokesperson, the Ministry of Environment concluded that a new environmental impact assessment is needed in order to clarify if the gold mine could be exploited (Caucasus Watch reported). The topic remained silent in Armenia since then.