President Vahagn Khachaturyan Speaks About 44-day War, Closed Borders and Democracy At Davos Forum

DAVOS — President Vahagn Khachaturyan addressed the panel discussion on “The Price of Living in Crisis” held within the framework of the World Economic Forum in Davos. He presented Armenia’s experience and past path.

“Until now, Armenia regularly finds itself in crises, which it tries to overcome in a special way. We have closed borders, anf it exerts a significant impact on our quality of life. We are talking about Turkey and Azerbaijan. We have the unresolved Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, which keeps us in constant conflict with our neighbor Azerbaijan. Only a year and a half ago, the 44-day war provoked by Azerbaijan cost us heavy human and material losses, the war was stopped only after the intervention of Russia,” President Khachaturyan said.

He noted that “we are in a new crisis now, but we are able to overcome it because the democratic principles we have adopted allow us to do so.”

“The most important thing is the relationship between the government and the society, the level of society’s trust in the government, on the other side is how well the government understands the problems of its society. If there is a dialogue between them, the issue of poverty will be resolved, the probability of a new crisis will decrease, the country will become more stable and manageable,” President Khachaturyan added.

He stressed that the most important thing is not to betray the principles, adding ghat the experience of our country shows that.”

“From 2000 to 2018, our country renounced democratic values, corruption ate the country in the true sense of the word. We found ourselves in an extremely bad situation. In 2018, a velvet revolution took place, as a result of which a young government came to power, giving new life to all spheres, business felt free, people felt free, people were able to do business freely, no one could stop them, demand money, political forces got an opportunity to participate in elections on equal terms. The economy grew by 7.5 percent the following year,” the President said, noting that the eradication of corruption became a great impetus.