Zhanna Avagyan: Hello Tigran, Yesterday, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan delivered a speech in the National Assembly, and I’d like us to focus on one of his statements. While speaking about the loss of Karabakh, he made the following remark: that we did not lose Nagorno-Karabakh, but instead found the Republic of Armenia—and he even qualified this as a success.
What is the purpose of making such a statement in the first place?
This is clearly part of the ruling party’s and Prime Minister Pashinyan’s rhetoric in recent years, in which they broadly attempt to avoid taking responsibility for the 2020 defeat. These kinds of statements have been made before in various forms—we even discussed, in a previous episode, his claim that Armenia is now much more sovereign than in 2018.
But in this specific case, there are of course some serious differences that we will discuss during the program. First, though, it’s worth analyzing what mechanisms Pashinyan—and more generally the ruling party’s propagandists—are using when deploying these kinds of tactics.
This is a classic post-truth tactic: on the one hand, it doesn’t outright deny the objective reality—that Armenia lost the Second Karabakh War—but on the other hand, it places emotional and affective emphasis on other aspects, thereby distorting reality in a broader sense.
So, it’s difficult to speak here of propaganda in the style of totalitarian systems, where reality is completely falsified—this isn’t Orwellian propaganda in the sense of declaring there was no war at all, or that Armenia didn’t lose. We haven’t quite reached that level yet.
However, reality is being described in such a way as to facilitate an evasion of responsibility. In other words, if you can convince the public that losing the Second Karabakh War somehow made Armenia more sovereign, more independent, then you’re trying to portray it as something that might even be a positive development, something that may have contributed to Armenia’s advancement.
This, of course, is a common approach among politicians in various societies today. The main feature of the post-truth era, as I already mentioned, is the emphasis on emotions and feelings over objective reality—the denial of objective facts, the acceptance of multiple truths.
With such statements, Nikol Pashinyan and his team are attempting to impose their own version of the truth.
What is striking here, however, is that these declarations don’t provoke serious public backlash—especially not from the active segments of society, including civil society. Perhaps there are even people who accept this view—that Armenia was somehow a semi-sovereign entity because of Karabakh, and that now, having been freed from Karabakh, it has become sovereign and independent.
But before we return to another part of his statement, it’s important to register a few facts that directly contradict these claims—even if we set aside the Karabakh issue, even if we ignore the fact that Karabakh is no longer Armenian.
There is an objective reality: the Armenian army, the army of the Republic of Armenia, was crushed in the 2020 war—the Second Karabakh War. And to this day, we have not been able to restore our military capabilities.
You know, in recent years I’ve had frequent interactions with various diplomats, including people who also engage directly with the Armenian authorities. Usually, when foreign delegations visit there are meetings in expert formats as well, and it’s clear that Armenia is currently in the position of a geopolitical beggar.
In other words, under this imaginary sovereignty, we are essentially going around pleading with various actors to ensure or at least contribute to our security. We are knocking on every door—and by “we,” I primarily mean the authorities, but also the expert community, which engages in these meetings in an attempt to contribute to some peace in the region.
That is, we do not have the capacity to ensure our own security, even at a very localized level. And in this situation, to claim that “we have found the Republic of Armenia” and that this is somehow a success—to say we’ve found the Republic of Armenia, the same Republic whose sovereign territories (not just Karabakh, which they now claim was a burden) have been occupied by Azerbaijan—is an absurd kind of declaration.
So, I have a question: what is the point of such statements in the first place? Why even talk about this topic at all? What is Nikol Pashinyan’s main objective?
I’ve already discussed the main toolkit—how it’s done and why—but in the broader picture, why return to this issue again and again?
The answer is that it’s necessary to keep returning to it, because the issue of responsibility will exist for many years to come. Broadly speaking, as long as Nikol Pashinyan and his political team remain in politics, this burden will always hang over them: the burden of losing Karabakh, of dismantling Armenia’s security system as a result.
And since we’re also entering an election year, these kinds of statements will become more frequent—because without doubt, in the 2025–2026 parliamentary elections, one of the main topics will again be: who lost Karabakh? Who was responsible for the loss of Artsakh? Why is our security situation what it is today? Why, five years after the Second Karabakh War, have no significant steps been taken to rebuild the security system? Why, five years after the defeat, can Azerbaijan still coerce concessions from Armenia using force or threats of force?
As long as this situation persists—and historically speaking, this situation is likely to remain a permanent fixture—these narratives about responsibility will continue to exist.
But at some point, these narratives have entered an entirely irrational domain.
Look: immediately after the end of the Second Karabakh War, the government’s propaganda tried to focus mainly on certain objective factors. If you remember, in 2021 various officials constantly cited a report written back in 2017 that highlighted the imbalance between Armenia and Azerbaijan in terms of critical infrastructure.
This is an objective factor that, of course, contributed to the 2020 defeat. But from a certain point onward—and I think that point can be chronologically identified as April 2022, with Pashinyan’s famous speech about lowering the bar—things began to shift. That’s when they started distorting the entire negotiation process, making statements like “Karabakh could never have been outside of Azerbaijan,” negotiating while recognizing Karabakh as part of Azerbaijan, using Azerbaijan’s interpretations of the negotiation process to promote their own agenda.
This entire approach entered the realm of irrationality. And this latest statement is the peak of efforts to deny reality, reject the truth, and create some kind of alternative reality—trying to present what is arguably the greatest defeat and greatest tragedy in the last hundred years of Armenian history as some kind of achievement.
In his explanation of this statement, Nikol Pashinyan said something to the effect that in 2018 he felt like prime minister of a forepost and that this feeling didn’t go away until October 2022. If I’m not mistaken, this coincides with a particular event.
So what does the Prime Minister even mean by making such a statement?
Earlier in the program, I mentioned that there’s a significant difference between this statement and earlier ones—and that’s exactly what I meant. If we listen to different figures from the ruling party, from the Prime Minister to members of Parliament, we’ll hear explanations along these lines:
Yes, we had false illusions about the region before 2020. We miscalculated Armenia’s capabilities. We were victims of certain dominant narratives in Armenian society. But, they say, we acknowledge our mistakes and, since the people voted for us again in 2021, we believe we must not repeat past mistakes—we must pursue a more rational foreign policy.
But this new statement completely contradicts those earlier claims. According to Nikol Pashinyan, he already knew in June 2018 that Armenia was just a “outpost,” not a real independent or sovereign state.
By the way, today Davit Petrosyan from ReStart, who is now studying in the U.S., made a very interesting post about this with a solid scholarly basis. He rightly questioned:
How was it possible to carry out a revolution or a democratic transition in an “outpost”?
If we read the theories of democratic transitions, we know there are several prerequisites—and true sovereignty, both internal and external, is one of the key preconditions.
So when Pashinyan says Armenia was a “forward post” in 2018, he’s essentially claiming that no revolution ever actually happened—or could have happened.
The second issue is this: if you believed Armenia was a “forward post,” lacking independence or sovereignty, then how did you pursue such an adventurous foreign policy in the two years leading up to the Second Karabakh War?
Because, to use his own words, none of the previous administrations that were allegedly “forward posts” ever adopted such policies—whether on Karabakh or other matters.
And there’s also the claim that in October 2022, when the Prague Statement was signed, Armenia “finally became sovereign.” We’ve already discussed in a previous program that Armenia’s ability to diversify away from Russia starting in the fall of 2022 was not due to its own steps or to its defeat in the Second Karabakh War, but rather to the Russia-Ukraine war.
If that war hadn’t happened, there would have been no Prague Statement, no European observers, no arms purchased from India or France, no closer relations with the West. All of that is the result of circumstances, and the decisions made were highly situational—ones that can easily be reversed.
In short, we’re dealing with yet another irresponsible statement—one that also plays on people’s emotions.
Alright, to wrap up our discussion, let’s also touch on Nikol Pashinyan’s visit. At the time of this recording, he is in Turkey on a working visit. Some meetings are likely planned. We know that the President of Azerbaijan is also there, but there’s no information or indication of a meeting between them.
What can we expect from this visit overall?
Well, I think it’s an important development in the context of recent years of Armenian-Turkish diplomacy. Of course, there have been visits before—most notably Serzh Sargsyan’s visit to Turkey during the period of “football diplomacy.”
At this stage, Armenia seems to be trying to speed up the normalization process with Turkey. But I believe regional dynamics also play a significant role here—specifically the Iran–Israel conflict and the potential destabilization in the region that it may trigger.
In such moments, we see that Armenia’s authorities tend to pursue quite proactive diplomacy in various directions, trying to mitigate possible threats. I think this visit should be viewed within that logic.
Thank you, Tigran.
Thank you as well.