He was the leader of the 2018 Armenian revolution which forced Prime Minister Serzh Sargsyan and his government to resign.

And

Pashinyan's new government included multiple liberal western NGO activists being appointed to senior positions 9

The government he led a "revolution" against?

According to the Freedom House report "In 2011, the government took concrete steps to fulfill longstanding and often repeated promises to confront corruption. E-government services reduced opportunities for bribery, while new regulations and stricter enforcement led to higher numbers of corruption lawsuits and fines against senior officials and large companies. Owing to a more consolidated government effort to eradicate corruption, Armenia's corruption rating improve[d] from 5.50 to 5.25.

During Sargsyan's presidency the record of the freedom of speech and the freedom of press in general also improved in Armenia. Internet penetration rose sharply – from 6.2 percent in 2008 to 37 percent in 2011, providing greater access to online media, which rapidly grew in number, including blogosphere – with over 10,000 bloggers in 2011.

After the elections Sargsyan also authorized opposition rallies to take place in Yerevan[23] and pledged to comply with the Council of Europe's demands for an end to the government's crackdown on the opposition.[24]

Civil society also grew considerably during Sargsyan's presidency, with the number of non-governmental organizations growing at a higher rate and with civic activists succeeding in raising public awareness and holding important campaigns in the sphere of human rights, environmental protection and social justice. However, according to Freedom House, public advocacy still had limited impact on public policy.[22]

Also

The start of Sargsyan's presidency coincided with the Great Recession. In 2009, Armenia's GDP contracted over 14%,[25] which according to the World Bank was the fifth worst in the world that year after the three Baltic states and Ukraine.[26] GDP growth subsequently stabilized at around 3% by 2013.[27] As of 2014, Armenia's GDP is below the pre-crisis levels. During his first term of presidency, the official poverty rate doubled and reached 32.4% in 2012.[28] According to official data, some 213,000 people have left Armenia from 2008 to 2013.[29] In 2012, Armenia was ranked 39th out of 179 economies according to the Index of Economic Freedom and ranked 19th freest among the 43 countries in the Europe region.[30]

In September 2013 and under Sargsyan's direction, Armenia announced its intentions of joining the Eurasian Economic Union with Belarus, Kazakhstan and Russia.[31] The Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU or EEU) is an economic union of Belarus, Kazakhstan and Russia, and came into force on 1 January 2015.[32] Treaties aiming for Armenia's accession to the Eurasian Economic Union was signed on 9 October 2014. Armenia's accession treaty came into force on 2 January 2015.[33] The Eurasian Economic Union has an integrated single market of 176 million people and a gross domestic product of over 4 trillion U.S. dollars (PPP).[34] The EEU introduces the free movement of goods, capital, services and people and provides for common transport, agriculture and energy policies, with provisions for a single currency and greater integration in the future.[35][36]

He also led Armenia through the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh war, that ended with a Russian-brokered truce with Azerbaijan.

Your suspicions might not be off base.