Your trusted source

By Vartan Oskanian, Armenia's former foreign minister

Every nation carries the weight of its history. It shapes identity, informs diplomacy, and provides a foundation for future generations. When a leader deliberately erases parts of this history to justify his own failures, he betrays not only his country’s past but also its future. This is precisely what Nikol Pashinyan is doing—rewriting Armenia’s story to excuse his political failures, offering the nation nothing but resignation and defeatism.

Yesterday, Pashinyan announced that Real Armenia will be the central premise of his campaign for the 2026 elections. He expects the Armenian people to rally behind a vision that demands they forget their past, abandon their displaced compatriots, and accept Armenia as a diminished and demoralized state. He insists that Armenia must accept its current borders—likely with further losses—and forget everything else. He presents this as pragmatism, but in reality, it is nothing more than a convenient excuse for his failures in diplomacy and governance. His doctrine of Real Armenia is about surrender. By erasing Karabakh from the national consciousness, he attempts to legitimize his inability to protect its people and their right to self-determination.

Yet history shows that such self-inflicted amnesia does not bring peace—only more concessions. A leader who repeatedly abandons his own people's fundamental rights does not build security; he invites further demands. The Azeri regime will not stop at Karabakh. Pashinyan’s pattern of retreat emboldens those who seek to further weaken Armenia. The more he erases history, the more he signals to Armenia’s adversaries that there is always more to take.

The entire nation—especially the opposition—must recognize that this is Pashinyan’s Achilles’ heel. His vision is not one of national renewal or pragmatic statecraft; it is one of incompetence, failure, and the formalization of Armenia’s decline. The idea that Armenia should accept its current state as its only possible future is not just uninspiring—it is outright dangerous. It signals to the world that Armenia will no longer fight for its interests, advocate for its historical rights, or even honor its own people’s suffering.

No serious nation simply forgets its lost territories. Greece has never erased the memory of Constantinople. Poland continues to commemorate Lviv. Serbia, despite losing Kosovo, still considers it a core part of its historical narrative. The Ukraine-Russia war will likely be resolved through harsh territorial compromises, but even in such a scenario, Ukraine will never erase its lost lands from its historical consciousness. Why should Armenia be any different?

We must be clear: there is a distinction between active territorial claims and historical truth, between peaceful negotiations and the erasure of identity. Yet Pashinyan’s defeatist rhetoric serves only his own political survival. He is not redefining history out of necessity but out of convenience—because acknowledging the truth would mean admitting his own responsibility for the disaster that unfolded under his watch.

The Armenian people must not let Real Armenia become an excuse for Pashinyan’s failures. This slogan must be turned against him—exposed for what it truly is: a hollow justification for incompetence, defeatism, and a betrayal of Armenia’s dignity.