Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan’s New Year’s Greeting
Dear people, dear citizens of the Republic of Armenia,
Since independence, 2025 is the first calendar year in which we have had neither casualties nor injuries as a result of gunfire with Azerbaijan. We have had no casualties as a result of gunfire on the Armenia-Azerbaijan border since March 2024, for more than 22 months now.
This is not a coincidence, but the implementation of the strategy of the people of Armenia, namely the strategy you delegated to the Government and the parliamentary majority in the 2021 snap elections.
This strategy is expressed in the ideology of the Real Armenia. It is connected with our newly discovered practice of reading and rereading the history of the Armenian people, searching for and finding hidden messages in it, and turning these messages into knowledge applicable to real life.
We were accused of conspiring to change that history.
Meanwhile, our goal was not to change the history that had already happened, but the history yet to unfold.
Our goal was ultimately to overcome the role delegated to us by the martyred people, and at the cost of many victims and sacrifices, we achieved that goal.
We were accused of acting against our identity. At the same time, we saw the obvious: our identity is our state, our state is our identity, and we invited all citizens of the Republic of Armenia and Armenians around the world to recognize that the agenda of strengthening the state is an agenda for enhancing identity. We are maintaining our state, we are strengthening our national identity.
We were accused of either denying historical Armenia or denying our history. At the same time, our policies are ultimately the result of listening to our history, which tells us: “Don’t repeat, enough of repeating me.”
The inspiration for the ideology of the real Armenia is historical Armenia, whose destiny tells us: “Don’t follow my path, don’t turn the Republic of Armenia into historical Armenia.”
In 2021, we said, “There is a future!” Today we say “the future is today,” and today we live in the future for which you, the citizens of the Republic of Armenia, voted in 2021. 2025 is the first full calendar year of that peaceful future, of peace.
We not only formulated the ideology of the Real Armenia, but also turned the Republic of Armenia into a real state that operates in the real world.
The geography of my international bilateral official meetings in 2025 is unimaginable. President of the United States, President of Russia, President of China, President of France, President of the Islamic Republic of Iran, President of Turkey, President of Kazakhstan, President of the United Arab Emirates, President of Azerbaijan, President of Tajikistan, Pope, President of the European Council, President of the European Commission, Chancellor of Germany, Prime Minister of Japan, Prime Minister of Belgium, Prime Minister of Georgia, Prime Minister of Estonia, Prime Minister of Albania.
In all these meetings, we have pursued one goal: to position Armenia as a fully independent and sovereign state that does not need guardianship, but can understand its own needs and issues, can make decisions necessary for its own survival, for its own survival, and not for its own survival. And we have achieved that goal.
We are accused of being pro-Turkish and pro-Azerbaijani, while our task is to see and recognize our region and environment with our own eyes and not allow our historical, yes, justified fears of confronting our area to be used to manipulate us, to break our will to be independent and sovereign. And we have achieved that goal. Today, the Republic of Armenia is a state more than ever, more independent than ever, more sovereign than ever, more secure than ever.
Epoch-making changes are taking place in our region. For the first time since independence, trains are bringing cargo into the Republic of Armenia through Azerbaijan's territory; the first signs of bilateral trade with Azerbaijan are appearing; and the first major cases of goods acquisition have been recorded.
This is a new history being written, and this is a history of peace.
The culmination of the first act of that history was the establishment of peace between Armenia and Azerbaijan. On August 8, 2025, at the White House summit convened by US President Donald Trump, we adopted a Declaration with the President of Azerbaijan, which President Trump also signed as a witness.
In our presence, the Foreign Ministers of the two countries initialed the Agreement “On the Establishment of Peace and Interstate Relations between Armenia and Azerbaijan”, the text of which we and official Baku had announced as early as March 2025.
Before that, in August-October 2024, the Deputy Prime Ministers of the two countries signed the Regulations on the Joint Activities of the Armenian and Azerbaijani Border Demarcation Commissions, which were later ratified in both countries.
With the highest legal force.
This is the first document signed and ratified bilaterally between Armenia and Azerbaijan, which is a cornerstone of peace. In that document, the 1991 Alma-Ata Declaration is enshrined as the basic principle for demarcating the state border between the two countries.
This is the only formula for real peace: to recognize each other's territorial integrity, sovereignty along the administrative borders of the Soviet republics, because any other formula will turn into an endless and bloody debate about which is the Republic of Armenia and which is the Republic of Azerbaijan. That debate would have no end.
This is why, in March 2025, I announced the need to halt the Karabakh movement. The key point here is that I did not make either the Prague statement of October 6, 2022, or the statement a concession, as some are trying to present. Still, I issued those statements as a vital necessity arising from the Republic of Armenia's conscious and authentic interests.
This is an important nuance. We are accused of making unilateral concessions. The truth is that we have made no concessions, absolutely no concessions, we have followed the agenda of our state's survival, and we have followed our state's interests.
The phrase “Karabakh was ours, now it is no longer ours” conveys the sense of someone caught in a geopolitical trap. In contrast, the consciousness of the state and the citizen says: “The Republic of Armenia was not ours, now it is ours.” Yes, at the cost of the lives of our martyrs, yes, at the expense of our suffering and deprivation, and thus more precious, therefore dearer than anything else, because it is nothing more than a dream come true. The Republic of Armenia is our dream come true, and we are living it today.
Dear people, dear citizens,
We have reached the future, and we are living in the future, and we will no longer appear in the past. 2026 will be a beautiful continuation of our current future.
In a few minutes, we will celebrate the New Year, having recorded high economic growth. Thus, together with you, we will have fulfilled the task we set in the 2021 elections to ensure an average annual economic growth of 7 percent. After the People's, non-violent, velvet Revolution of 2018, the economy of the Republic of Armenia has grown by more than 50 percent. In 2025, state tax revenues are 30 percent higher than the entire state budget in 2017.
This is thanks to you, to the business entities working in Armenia, creating results, paying taxes prescribed by law, and to those citizens who do not forget to provide or demand a cashier's check. Thank you all. You are the rock on which our homeland-state is based.
It is thanks to the people working in the Republic of Armenia, creating results, paying taxes prescribed by law, providing or requesting a cash register receipt, that in a few minutes the comprehensive health insurance system will begin to operate, for which the state budget will pay, instead of pensioners under 18 and over 65.
This means there will be a significant increase in pensioners' standard of living, because the primary and most important expenses of pensioners are healthcare-related, and those expenses will now decrease. And for cashless transactions by pensioners, the refund will increase to 20 percent, as will that for beneficiaries.
By 2026, we will complete the program for the construction, reconstruction, or major renovation of 300 schools and 500 kindergartens and immediately begin the program for the construction, reconstruction, or significant renovation of another 300 schools, 100 kindergartens, as well as at least 100 art schools, sports schools, and sports centers. The Academic City megaproject has entered the practical phase, and the pace of program implementation will increase.
What do I have to say to those people who continue to live in poor social conditions? Our strategy for solving their problem is encapsulated in the famous saying: “If you want to feed a man, do not give him a fish, but teach him how to fish.” A capable person must earn his living through his work. If he works and cannot make ends meet, then the work is not sufficiently effective, and we must support and help the person increase his efficiency as a worker and acquire the necessary skills to work effectively. This is also a path of education and training.
The Government has three solutions for any issue in any field: the first is education, the second is education, and the third is education. Education for us must become and is becoming a national way of life and mindset, which is key to solving any external and internal, economic and social issues.
Thanks to this strategy, today in Armenia, teachers and ordinary soldiers receive salaries of 700,000 drams or more. This is the real achievement of a real citizen of Real Armenia is the erum.
In 2026, the Republic of Armenia's international prestige will rise. In May, the 8th Summit of the European Political Community will be held in Yerevan, and in October, the COP-17 Biodiversity Summit will be held. Armenia will host the heads of several dozen countries and delegates from hundreds.
2026 promises great economic and investment activity, as the implementation of the “Trump Path for International Peace and Prosperity” project will be launched, institutionalizing the lifting of the blockade on the Republic of Armenia. An epoch-making event that seemed unimaginable years ago.
The most important event of 2026, however, is the regular elections of the National Assembly to be held in June. It is in these elections that the citizens of the Republic of Armenia must irrevocably stand up for the peace he has created, the state he has reestablished, their own, that is, the people's power.
The elections will be free, fair, and democratic, and the people and the Republic of Armenia will win. The future will win, which is today, here, now.
2026 will be a year of consolidation and unity. Such unity, at the core of which is the Republic of Armenia, is internationally recognized
Sovereign territory, the right of its citizens to live freely, prosperously, and happily, and the independence and state interests of the Republic of Armenia.
Glory to the martyrs and long live the Republic of Armenia.
Happy New Year and Merry Christmas. I love you all.
