Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan’s note:

Dear people, dear citizens of the Republic of Armenia,

On August 23, 1991, the Supreme Council of the Armenian SSR adopted the Declaration of Independence of Armenia.

This document marked the beginning of the process of establishing our independent statehood, the Republic of Armenia. The Declaration, in essence, expressed the collective mood of the political and intellectual elite operating in Armenia at the time of its adoption, bore the stamp of the Karabakh movement that had begun just two years earlier and was reaching its peak, and was to predetermine the key features of the newly formed independent Republic of Armenia.

And so it happened, because the key ideological provisions of the Declaration were conflicting and expressed the model of our collective patriotism that had been gradually but consistently instilled in us by the Soviet Union since the 1950s, in the environment of the establishment of the Iron Curtain and the start of the Cold War.

This model of patriotism that the Soviet Union had formed for us Armenians expressed the southwestern direction of the ambitions of the USSR. This state had won the Second World War and entered into conflict with the North Atlantic Alliance. This model, on the other hand, was intended to ensure the export of patriotic perceptions existing in the Armenian SSR from the territory of the republic, to prevent its local expression.

This ideology has been instilled for decades through various media, including books, films, and theater performances. It is our socio-psychology, thus formed, that led to the Karabakh movement. We were all the bearers of that socio-psychology, that socio-psychology formed by the USSR was transferred to the generations formed in the Republic of Armenia in the 90s, and the deep and subconscious goal of that socio-psychology was the strategic impossibility of the existence of an independent state of Armenia, because a country with a surrounding conflict context cannot build absolute independence.

Dear people, dear citizens of the Republic of Armenia,

The complete and comprehensive analysis of the information and reality available in the post of Prime Minister brought me to the unshakable conviction that we should not continue the Karabakh movement, because it means the abolition of the independence of the Republic of Armenia. Today, I also want to answer a question that is the most important for understanding the history of the last 7 years.

After all, why did the Republic of Armenia, our Government, and I myself not make concessions until September 2020, which was the only theoretical opportunity to avoid a 44-day war? The key reason for this was that, as a result of those concessions, all the threats and dependencies we had would have increased disproportionately, leading to the loss of Armenia’s independence and statehood.

We adopted a strategy to preserve Armenia’s independence and make that independence a reality. The expression of that strategy is the ideology of the Real Armenia, under which conditions peace between Armenia and Azerbaijan became possible, under which conditions authentic dialogue with Turkey became possible, and under which conditions our relations with Georgia and the Islamic Republic of Iran should deepen. Under these conditions, we become an authentic and engaging partner for the world.

Dear people, dear citizens of the Republic of Armenia,

Our state, the Republic of Armenia, with its internationally recognized sovereign territory of 29,743 square kilometers, is the most important value we have and have had for over 500 years. And the interests of our state must guide us, and our state and its interests must be the foundation and axis of our patriotism, for the love of the creative people living in it, all of you.

We are going this way and, having passed through hellish trials on that way, we have reached a seemingly incredible destination. The Republic of Armenia is today more independent than ever, more sovereign than ever, more a state than ever, more prosperous than ever, more promising than ever, because it is peaceful. Peace has been established, and it must become the subject of daily care and concern; it must become institutional.

August 2025 became the beginning of the peaceful and prosperous life of the Republic of Armenia.

I congratulate all of us on this occasion.

Glory to the martyrs and long live the Republic of Armenia.