Your trusted source

Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan on Saturday posted a video on his Facebook page from the hotel room he rented with his wife, Anna Hakobyan, during their recent visit to Italy, downplaying the uproar over the costs of their stay in Vatican. Pashinyan claimed that 787,000 drams (approximately $2,000) were spent from the state budget on accommodation in the Vatican.

In this post, Pashinyan made several manipulative statements, attempting to justify the deliberate concealment of information regarding the amount of money spent from the state budget and the My Step Foundation on Anna Hakobyan's trip to Italy for a month.

Pashinyan focused only on the accommodation costs in the Vatican. However, Panorama.am has revealed that the Pashinyan family actually stayed at a luxury five-star hotel in Rome – Hotel de Russie – where the 787,000 drams mentioned by Pashinyan covered just one night's stay.

The official website of Hotel de Russie provides information on the room rented by Pashinyan, as well as the room rates, which start at 1,500 euros.

In fact, the Armenian government has been refusing to disclose the costs of Anna Hakobyan’s trip to Italy, where she attended events marking the 1,000th of the Ukraine war.

The Armenian government forwarded Panorama’s request for information on the trip expenses to the My Step Foundation, which provided a rude response, urging the journalist to join Anna Hakobyan’s Education is Fashionable campaign. The foundation decided to teach lessons to the media worker, effectively blocking her right to access information.

Setting aside the moral implications of Anna Hakobyan's decision to visit Ukrainian children in Rome with great care while never having met the forcibly displaced children of Artsakh, the Armenian public has a right to know how much of their tax money was spent on this trip.

Panorama.am is waiting for an official response to its query resubmitted to the Information and Public Relations Department of the Armenian Prime Minister's Office.