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YEREVAN, DECEMBER 3, ARMENPRESS. Armenia must overcome the perception of a nation-martyr by the international community, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan has said.
“Especially in the context of our national strategic objective, which is the eternity of the statehood of the Republic of Armenia, it is highly important for us to understand how the world perceives us. This could seem like a very simple question, but it has many important layers and nuances. When recently I tried to sum up my impressions of the past 6,5 years, I made an unavoidable conclusion: our average statistical image in the world can be worded in the following way: the world perceives us as a nation-martyr. And overall the message we want to send to the world is the following, that we consider our government’s biggest mission to be overcoming the status of a nation-martyr,” Pashinyan said in parliament during 2025 state budget debates.
Pashinyan said that in the past, the proposed option for overcoming the perception was the adoption of the nation-army concept.
“Our average statistical reaction to this situation has been and to some extent continued to be and still remains the following, that the best way to overcome the nation-martyr formula is the nation-army formula, but I am not sure that this is right. My deliberations conclude that the nation-army is within the continuity of nation-martyr. If you position yourself as a nation-army, you generate other armies against you. It is the right agenda that one must have a strong army, but one must ask, how strong and stronger than who we want to have it? How strong of an army should we have, and what if it turns out that our problem isn’t just with our enemies, but also with our friends,” Pashinyan said.
Pashinyan said the logic of a state that functions on its recognized territory and for its interests must be adopted instead of the nation-martyr-nation-army formulas.
“Armenia must function solely for its own economic development. A security system must be created where it’s not the army on the first line, where there are security buffers before that,” Pashinyan said.