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Armenia’s Speaker of Parliament Ruben Rubinyan has rejected opposition claims that Armenia’s territory has shrunk, saying the country’s territory has always been 29,743 square kilometers and that the previously cited figure of 29,800 square kilometers was simply a rounded estimate.
Rubinyan made the remarks during a parliamentary session in response to a speech by Artur Khachatryan, a member of the opposition Hayastan (Armenia) faction. Khachatryan, who is also a member of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (ARF), said that they had been taught at school that Armenia’s territory was 29,800 square kilometers, whereas the government now cites a different figure.
“29,743, when rounded, becomes 29,700, so a legitimate question arises: where did the 57 square kilometers of the sovereign territory of the Republic of Armenia go?” Khachatryan said.
Rubinyan specifically referred to a 2005 report on the availability and distribution of Armenia’s land resources.
“First of all, it has always been 29,743. The encyclopedia may have used the rounded figure in the heading, and then given the exact figure below,” the Speaker said.
Rubinyan said that in 2005, when the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (ARF/Dashnaktsutyun) was part of the ruling coalition, a report on the country’s land resources approved by the Armenian government stated that Armenia’s territory was 2,974,300 hectares, which corresponds to 29,743 square kilometers.
Rubinyan added that the same figure was also given in the corresponding documents from 2010 and 2015.
The Speaker also addressed the Alma-Ata Declaration, noting that, following the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the administrative borders that had existed between the former Soviet republics became interstate borders.
“It is written there in black and white that the existing inter-republican borders become interstate borders. This means that whatever borders existed between the Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic and the Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic at that time became interstate borders,” Rubinyan said.
According to him, recognition of Armenia’s territory as 29,743 square kilometers also follows from this logic.
Rubinyan also pointed to what he described as a contradiction in the opposition MP’s positions. On the one hand, the opposition argues that Armenia’s ratification of the Alma-Ata Declaration in 1991 should not be considered a step toward recognizing Karabakh as part of Azerbaijan. On the other hand, it portrays the 2022 Prague Statement—in which the parties reaffirmed their recognition of each other’s territorial integrity on the basis of the Alma-Ata Declaration—as a change in Armenia’s policy.
“Now decide: does the recognition of each other’s territorial integrity under the Alma-Ata Declaration mean recognition of the borders of the former Soviet republics, or does it not?” the Speaker said.