SARDARAPAT — Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, along with President Vahagn Khachaturyan, National Assembly Speaker Alen Simonyan, and other top officials of Armenia, visited the Sardarapat Memorial on the occasion of Republic Day.
Delivering a speech at the memorial, the Prime Minister stated:
“Our people no longer need to search for a homeland or dream about it, because our dreams have been realized — our homeland is found, embodied in the Republic of Armenia, embodied in the state.
Since 2020, through brutal trials and at the cost of our martyrs’ lives, we have gained a historic opportunity to deepen our sovereignty, understand the value of statehood, and make it everlasting.
Today, we are more of a state than ever before, more sovereign than ever before, and more independent than ever before,” Pashinyan declared.
He also emphasized the growth of Armenia’s international standing, noting that relations with various countries are gaining new momentum. He concluded:
“We have overcome an era of losses and entered a promising new phase in the history of achievements. Pessimism and despair are no longer companions of the Republic of Armenia.”
Pashinyan remarked that Republic Day is tied to a pivotal moment in Armenia’s millennia-old history — the founding of the First Republic. Though the First Republic, born of the victory at the Battle of Sardarapat, lasted only two years and a few months, it transformed a nation that had been without statehood for four and a half centuries into a state-building people once again.
“The First Republic refreshed, but did not solidify, our perception of statehood. It sowed the seeds of democracy and freedom but did not have time to root them in our society.
In 1991, when Armenia regained independence, it seemed that seventy years of propaganda had not left a deep mark, and that the fear of being independent and self-reliant had been overcome.
However, a retrospective analysis of the Third Republic’s history clearly shows that disdain for statehood and fears about sovereignty and autonomy have not been fully overcome,” the Prime Minister concluded.
