This is How We Lose Our State: Pashinyan

In Armenia, there is a phenomenon where young people, around 30 years old, claim their regional identity. Today, during his concluding speech on the discussion of the 2025 state budget in the National Assembly, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan commented on this trend.

“You ask someone from another place, and they say, ‘I am from Masis.’ The fifth person says, ‘I am from Vanadzor,’ the seventh goes, ‘I am from Khor Virap,’ and the eighth says, ‘I am from Igdir.’ I understand this well, but dear people, I want to understand who the person from Dilijan is in this country, who the Yerevan resident is, who the Ashtarak resident is in this country,” he stated.

Pashinyan continued, “Even if I want to, I cannot be from Masis or Vanadzor because I am from Ijevan, I am Armenian, I am from Ijevan. I want to say that too, but then I am considered an ‘anti-national element.’ I can’t go beyond Yenokavan; no matter how many archives I dig up, I ask myself to open one more page for me, but no,” he added.

He noted, “We do not understand a simple thing; when we live in Dilijan and say, ‘I am from Vanadzor,’ we lose Dilijan. We open a corridor for others to say that there are no indigenous people here; those who came from here and there say this is an ancient Turkish city, and this is an ancient Azerbaijani city. And we are losing our state; we have lost our state,” he declared.