Pashinyan: Armenia was being turned into “banana state” before 2018

Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan has rejected claims that Armenia enjoyed peace prior to his government coming to power in 2018, arguing instead that the country had been in a state of ongoing conflict.

Speaking ahead of the start of the election campaign of the Civil Contract party, Pashinyan said that casualties among soldiers before 2018 demonstrated the absence of real peace, Caliber.Az reports, citing Armenian media.

“We had war, because every year we had casualties and wounded. Where have you seen peace when soldiers are killed and wounded? We did not have peace, we had a constant war and constant postponements of the start of the war, and the deadline for this postponement was announced by the April war of 2016. But it is also very important that the April war was preceded by a completely new package of proposals for the settlement of the Karabakh issue, which is already known to all of us and has been published,” he said.

Pashinyan noted that the framework for resolving the Karabakh issue had been established as early as the 1996 Lisbon Summit, adding that subsequent delays were largely linked to Armenia’s internal challenges and threats to its statehood.

“Our task was to pull Armenia out of this trap. At the cost of our sacrifices and losses, we preserved Armenian statehood,” he said.

The prime minister also argued that the situation Armenia faced in 2018 implied limited sovereignty, claiming that the country was not meant to function as an independent state.

“At best, it would have been a banana state that would receive permission from various places to breathe,” he said.

Pashinyan stressed that the priority now is to safeguard the country’s current trajectory.

“Now is the time to defend our current Armenia,” he said.

By Tamilla Hasanova