Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan participated in the plenary session of the 7th Eastern Economic Forum on the theme "On the Road to a Multipolar World" in Vladivostok.

The President of the Russian Federation, Vladimir Putin, the Prime Ministers of Myanmar and Mongolia, and the Chairman of the Standing Committee of the All-China People's Assembly of China also participated in the event. Prime Minister of India Narendra Modi and heads of governments of Malaysia and Vietnam delivered a speech at the forum remotely.

In his speech, Nikol Pashinyan, in particular, noted:

"Dear Vladimir Vladimiri,

Dear friends,

First, thank Vladimir Vladimiri for inviting me to the 7th Southeast Economic Forum, a platform to exchange thoughts and ideas on various issues.

It should be noted that the most common sentence in the current year is probably "we live in unusual times." But if we look deeper, the question arises, when were those times regular? Human history is generally a chain and not a sequence of ordinary times. For this, humanity has created a different formula that every crisis brings new challenges and opens new opportunities. The main task now for governments and states is to understand how to manage the challenges and spot and exploit the opportunities.

In this context, of course, these are unusual times for our region because challenges here have existed for a long time and are primarily related to security. How is this related to the current situation? When the attention of the entire international community, and especially the Russian Federation, Armenia's strategic ally in the field of security, is focused on the situation around Ukraine, there are concrete concerns that this may lead to destabilization of the situation in our region.

And, by the way, we have had a not-so-stable situation in recent years. You are aware that in 2020 we survived a war. When Azerbaijan started that war, all the international community's attention, including the Russian Federation, was focused on the coronavirus pandemic. We hope that in close cooperation with the Russian Federation and our partners, we will be able to manage and keep our regional situation under control.

This is also very important for global security. I want to note that we also have good news because now there are excellent dynamics in the economy of Armenia. This year, we have targeted at least 7 percent economic growth. And in that context, I would like to emphasize that the Eurasian Economic Union has justified itself for our country in this specific situation as well because the economic growth now observed in Armenia is related to the freedoms that the Eurasian Economic Union provides. I mean the free movement of goods, services, capital, and labor, and we see this firsthand. Of course, we need to work on the next stage to maintain this dynamic so that a new economic crisis does not arise after such economic growth.

Since the issue related to the regions has already been discussed here, it is necessary to clarify what Armenia has to do with the Southeast Forum and the Far East. It is known that the logistics schemes are changing in the current situation, and if we look at the map, we can see and notice that opportunities are opening up for Armenia as well. The movement of goods from east to west and west to east will not stop, from north to south and from south to north. If we look at the map, it is evident that Armenia is at the crossroads of these roads and paths. We believe that there are indeed opportunities that should be tried to exploit. Now we are implementing the North-South project in Armenia; it is the construction of a new highway that connects our southern border with Iran to the northern border with Georgia.

A new opportunity also emerges here. You know that on November 9, 2020, thanks to the personal efforts of Vladimir Vladimiri Putin, a statement was signed between Armenia, Russia, and Azerbaijan on the cessation of all military operations in the Nagorno Karabakh conflict zone. And point 9 of that statement talks about unblocking all regional economic and transport infrastructures. After that, on January 11, 2021, this time in Moscow, we signed a tripartite statement with the presidents of Russia and Azerbaijan to create a working group led by the deputy prime ministers of the Russian Federation, Armenia, and Azerbaijan, which deals with the opening of infrastructures in our region between Armenia and Azerbaijan. The idea of ​​this project is that Armenia will get transport routes through Azerbaijan, and Azerbaijan will get transport routes through the part of Armenia. Globally, it is the opening of new international trade channels.