PM Pashinyan urges Karabakh Armenians to take Armenian citizenship

Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan has urged Armenians who left Azerbaijan's Karabakh region in 2023 to forget about returning and to permanently settle in Armenia, accepting Armenian citizenship.

“Dear sisters and brothers of Karabakh, you must settle in Armenia and obtain citizenship of the Republic of Armenia,” he emphasised.

“We can say that we are taking up the agenda of returning the people of Karabakh, but who will benefit from this? Will the people of Karabakh benefit?” Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said in remarks to journalists on December 18, according to Armenian media cited by Caliber.Az.

Pashinyan stated that he was speaking directly and unequivocally: the authorities were refusing to return to Karabakh.

He emphasised the need to learn from past mistakes and draw conclusions. “You are calling to sentence the people of Karabakh, as well as the rest of the Armenian people, to the status of wanderers, so that these people do not know where they will live, whether they have an address or not. Yes, they do have an address. And that is Armenia, with its internationally recognised sovereign territory,” Pashinyan said.

“We are not going to question the fate of an entire people and state just so that a few specialists have work. We have rejected that path. As a result, we have transformed from a state with disabilities into a fully functioning state,” Pashinyan concluded.

By Khagan Isayev