My Ancestor Would Spit in His Eyes: Margarita Simonyan on Pashinyan

The editor-in-chief of the Russian Russia Today television channel, Margarita Simonyan, quoted Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan's comments from 2005 on her Facebook page and strongly criticized him.

Citing Pashinyan’s statement, Simonyan recalled her own ancestor who survived the genocide: "Nikol Pashinyan, 2005. Let’s stop praising our ancestors and ask ourselves a very pragmatic question: What have our ancestors left us, what inheritance do we have? Nothing, more than nothing. Because 'nothing' is when you have to start from zero, and we have to start from I don’t know what minus, because our ancestors left us only genocides, humiliations, betrayals, and immorality, which turns out to be very difficult, very difficult to overcome. I condemn our ancestors, I curse them for doing nothing so that we could live today with more dignity and pride. Our ancestors didn’t care for their descendants at least as instinctively as animals do. I condemn all those who praise our ancestors."

Citing Pashinyan’s comments, Simonyan expressed severe criticism toward the Prime Minister of Armenia: "My golden ancestor, who survived the genocide and raised me with respect for the memory of the victims of an unprecedented bloody massacre in history. It’s good that you do not see this, my dear! You don’t know that a man who blames you, my grandmother, the one whose entire family was slaughtered before your eyes with a yataghan, and only your elder sister managed to drown herself to prevent her share from reaching the janissaries, is now in charge of Armenia. He accuses you, the holy one, of ‘genocide and immorality’. Now I understand why my post caused such an uproar in Armenia. I truly do not belong to the part of society that can rejoice at the rule of a man who disregards the great history of the Armenians, curses the ancestors, and disrespects the memory of the genocide victims. My ancestor would spit in his eyes. Shame."