RA Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan made a speech, which we present below.
“Dear people, dear citizens of the Republic of Armenia, from today, May 24, 2024, the border guard troops of the National Security Service of the Republic of Armenia took over the protection of 1.9 km of Berkaber settlement and 4.9 km of Voskepar and Baghanis settlements of the state border of the Tavush region of the Republic of Armenia.
A transitional scheme will protect the 5.8 km demarcated section of the Kirants settlement of the state border until July 24, 2024.
This process of border liberalization has been the most discussed topic in recent months, and I consider it essential that each of us, each citizen, has a clear answer to the following questions: What is happening in our country? What is happening to our country? Why? What are the possible scenarios and alternatives from this point forward?
The critical factor from which the current processes derive is the RA government’s strategy on its working table. It is the strategy of Real Armenia, the strategy of Armenia, the golden map image I show you all at every opportunity. Here, we are talking about Armenia.
And why should this map cause debates and inflame passions? For a simple reason. In the previous 33 years and before, our social psychology’s object, goal, and destination differed from this Armenia.
There were objective reasons for this. The most important of those reasons is our national misfortune of not having a state for centuries, which in itself should keep the dream of restoring statehood alive in our consciousness and subconsciousness. Statehood has been the most important component of our national identity.
But while dreaming of a state, we relied on the memories from the state tradition we had in the past. Yervandunian Armenia, Artashesian Armenia, Arshakunian Armenia, Bagratunian Armenia, Cilician Armenia. Those Armenians were not identical and comparable with each other in terms of their territory and sometimes geographical location, which became an objective obstacle to the concretization and objectification of our ideas about Armenia.
This may not seem essential, but imagine you want to build a house. You need to figure out which area, location, and size of the home you want to develop. Until your understanding of these matters becomes concrete, you cannot build that house, and your efforts to build it will never come to fruition. The most you will have is chaotic actions because you do not decide in which area you want to build a house, in what position, and in what size.
During the short period of the First Republic’s existence, we did not manage to become concrete in our ideas about the Republic of Armenia. The Second Republic was the Soviet Republic, which was not a sovereign state but a country within the USSR. Due to this fact, it was a hostile environment for thinking about independence and an independent Armenia. Those with such thoughts and ideas were subject to criminal prosecution and were a threat to the integrity of the Soviet Union.
One method of the Soviet Union’s struggle against the national solid self-awareness of the Armenians was to direct the independence dreams of the Armenian SSR outside the territory of Soviet Armenia and the Soviet Union, sometimes geopolitically and sometimes to weaken and eradicate the perception of the Armenian SSR as a potential area for the re-creation of Armenian statehood. The Soviet Union promoted the formula of seeking a homeland outside the Armenian SSR among Armenians.
Due to these and several other factors, the search for the homeland became one of the pillars of our Armenians’ subconscious. This formula of looking for a homeland in the motherland was harmless for the Soviet Union because it directed the dreams of re-establishing statehood from the Armenian SSR, sometimes even outside the territory of the USSR, and also became a geopolitical factor that the Soviet Union could use in its international relations.
And those who tried to connect the feelings of Armenian statehood with Soviet Armenia, as carriers of anti-Soviet activities, ended up in prisons and on the political margins; that is, their supporters did not multiply.
Here, it is in the conditions of thinking of looking for a homeland, a state outside the homeland, that the Third Republic of Armenia was formed, which positioned itself not as a means of ensuring the freedom, security, and well-being of its citizens, but adopted a vision that fully and completely fit into the Soviet-Armenian formula of the search for a homeland. This is where we find ourselves in the situation described above, unsure, still determining what territory we want to build a state in, in what position we want to make it, and in what size. The search for a homeland was reaffirmed as the key socio-psychology of the Third Republic. A considerable part of the deep problems of the Third Republic are related to this.
I cannot boast that I had this understanding; I realized these conceptual nuances throughout my prime ministership. I have systematically dealt with this agenda after assuming the position of the RA Prime Minister, seeing in-depth and practically the threats that depend not only on the security of the Republic of Armenia but also on the existence of our state in general.
Therefore, the conceptual question, the solution of which I considered vital as prime minister, is the following: How are we going to ensure the lasting and successful future of the Republic of Armenia? Strategic thinking on these issues led me to the Peace Agenda and the vision of Real Armenia, which are deeply connected to each other.
Suppose our strategic vision differs from Real Armenia’s. In that case, the already tricky peace will not be possible because our environment will consider us a strategic threat and, therefore, will do everything to destroy our statehood or physically prevent its development.
Secondly, when we don’t spend our limited resources and energy on the strategic needs of Real Armenia, we don’t have the results we could have, and Armenia’s development and the future of our children are doubly hindered. The peace that the Republic of Armenia needs so much is becoming more unattainable.
Under these conditions, our country’s sovereignty is significantly damaged because when your ideas about the motherland do not exactly identify with your country’s internationally legitimate borders, you are forced to open the way for the disproportionate influence of others because you feel that you get the strength and support to advance your agendas that do not coincide with legitimate boundaries.
So here we are again in the Soviet-Armenian model of patriotism. It is this model that separated the concept of the homeland from the idea of the state, solving the practical problem that the Armenian people should not consider the Armenian SSR, even if incomplete, the state as a homeland because the next step in thinking that state as a homeland would be deepening the consciousness of independence.
Contrary to various assessments, our government is not separating but trying to re-unite to equate the concepts of homeland and state because this is the only way to establish and strengthen the Republic of Armenia. Otherwise, we will spend our already limited resources on the search for a homeland, undermining the future of the motherland-state.
As one of you who received a mandate from you to work on the resolutions to ensure the future of Armenia, I spent years thinking about this age-old agenda, this nightmare, before and after the 44-day war. My thoughts have brought me to the unequivocal conviction that our duty to the future and future generations, as well as to the real people living in the Republic of Armenia today, requires us to do everything to make Armenia a national and state ideology with demarcated borders, sovereign and democratic.
The discussions that are taking place in our country are not surprising to me because I have personally gone through that painful path, from the psychology of Historical Armenia to the psychology of Real Armenia, and we are going through that same path together now.
We cross that road, and at the end of that road is our Promised Land, the Republic of Armenia, with the difference that we are still here, but very often we do not notice our Promised Land, and because of not seeing it, we continue our search for the Promised Land. Today, our country is not perfect, also because our endless search for the Promised Land in the Promised Land does not allow us to concretely formulate the answer to the question of which area, in what position, of what size we want to build a home-state, and the demarcation process of this question. Formulates the answer column by column.
And together, we must cross this road, which is not covered with a road mat but passes through thorns and pitfalls, hard decisions, disappointments, and misunderstandings. Still, it is the only one with a horizon ahead of it leading to the natural Promised Land. , Real Armenia: Republic of Armenia. This is a crucial way. One philosopher says that the best path is the one that gets you where you are. This path brings us to where we are, the Republic of Armenia, and gives us the opportunity to look at our reality from a completely different perspective. And it is only from that point of view that the future and the route to that future can be seen.
There is only one guarantee to complete that road—widespread knowledge and conviction of mission among political leadership.
Our political team and I live by that mission. We have put a resolution on the table that will guarantee the 29 thousand 743 square kilometers of the internationally recognized legitimate territory of the Republic of Armenia. The borders that enclose that territory, and our task is not only to lead but also to the people To inspire the citizens of the Republic of Armenia with that vision and resolution because this is a resolution. This movement led us to absolute independence and sovereignty, territorial integrity, and the inviolability of borders.
This formula will give our talented people, each of you, the opportunity to concretize and enjoy the results of your work in the face of a free, fair, safe, prosperous, and happy Armenia. How and in what sequence of steps will we achieve this goal? I presented in detail at the May 7 press conference and saw the need to avoid repeating the same in other speeches and this format. The primary purpose of this message is to clarify and comment on what is happening in our country, with our country, and why it is happening.
The establishment of the real Armenia takes place in our lives and our consciousness. It is a difficult, painful process that we go through together and must go through. We must bring to its conclusion a movement for independence and sovereignty, and my political team and I consider this our mission. Our mission is to make the state, freedom, and sovereignty a means that serves the citizen rather than the citizen serving himself.
Both in 2018 and 2021, the proud citizens of the Republic of Armenia have given us a mandate to ensure its future, which must be fully and completely implemented. Glory to the martyrs, and long live the Republic of Armenia. And long live our children who will live in Free and Happy Armenia.”
