That Volunteer Exists Because the State Does Not Exist: Pashinyan

In the last 600 years, we, as a people, have lived in a state imposed on us rather than one we created ourselves. This was stated by Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan during the discussion of the draft state budget for 2025 in the National Assembly.

“Therefore, our first perception of the state is that it is a imposition, and our first reaction to that is the internal desire to shake it off and resist it,” he said.

Pashinyan noted that, predictably, representatives of the opposition connected heroism with the volunteer who defends the borders and the act of volunteering.

“There is fundamentally nothing wrong with this perception, with the distinction that linking border protection with volunteering, while viewing tax payment merely as an 'expression of legally sanctioned activities,' or opposing them is a consequence of an anti-state perception. If we are talking about the volunteer in the song 'Long Live Our Armenian Volunteer, Pour the Wine,' that volunteer exists in the absence of a state and exists solely because there is no state; in other words, the volunteer described in that song is a symbol of the state's non-existence,” he stated.

Pashinyan mentioned that there are still volunteers today, but their existence and necessity are also conditioned by the incompleteness of state institutions.

“Moreover, today’s volunteer differs from the volunteer in the song 'Dear Friend, Pour the Wine' in that they receive tangible compensation from the state budget for their volunteering,” he noted.