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Vardan Voskanyan, an expert on Iran, calls for measures to stimulate population growth in Armenia and Artsakh, making it high on the agenda.

He recalled Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev’s statement that “an Armenia of five million people may pose threats, so it must not be allowed.”

“The principle 'listen to your enemy and do the opposite' perfectly applies here, so one of our key priorities must be to promote substantial population growth in Armenia and Artsakh and to prevent emigration,” Voskanyan wrote on Facebook.

“Our elites didn't have the courage to honestly tell us that war is inevitable and encourage every family in Armenia and Artsakh to have at least 4-5 children.

“The latest catastrophic war is also an opportunity to learn from our mistakes, while we continue to stick to the pre-war destructive approach in which population growth is the least important issue, whereas the fight against, for example, tossing cigarette butts on the street is ‘pivotal’,” he said.