YEREVAN – The wife of former Armenian President Serzh Sarkisian has died after being infected with the coronavirus. She was 58.
Sarkisian’s office said Rita Sarkisian died on November 20, days after being hospitalized in critical condition with COVID-19 on November 16.
She was born in 1962 in Nagorno-Karabakh, an enclave that is inside Azerbaijan but mainly populated by ethnic Armenians. It was the site of weeks of recent fighting between Armenia and Azerbaijan until a truce was brokered by Russia.
Serzh Sarkisian, also a native of Nagorno-Karabakh, served twice as the prime minister of Armenia and was the third president of Armenia between 2008 and 2018.