Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan suggested on Wednesday that if his administration hadn’t made the decision to launch the border delimitation process with Azerbaijan in April 2024, Armenia would have lost its independence.

“In March–April 2024, we reached the brink of Armenia’s statehood. If we had not made the decision in April 2024 to launch the border delimitation process with Azerbaijan, the Republic of Armenia today would, at most, be under foreign rule,” Pashinyan said in his address to the European Parliament in Strasbourg.

Prime Minister Pashinyan said that making the decision on border delimitation was extremely difficult. “With the encouragement of our church’s de facto leader, an archbishop began a movement in Armenia calling not only to halt the delimitation but, in effect, to revive the Karabakh movement, the conflict, if you will,” he said.

The Prime Minister noted that tens of thousands of citizens, influenced by a disinformation campaign carried out by high-ranking clergymen and their allied opposition forces—who claimed that the government intended to cede Armenian sovereign territory, including ancient churches and villages, to Azerbaijan—took to the streets.

“You can imagine what this meant for our government and political team, which came to power through the 2018 peaceful, non-violent Velvet Revolution. How did we resolve the problem? We spoke to our employer—the people. Today, the village of Kirants in Tavush Province, which the church-opposition leaders had turned into a symbol, warning people that it would be abandoned, has seen nearly a 50 percent increase in households with the support of the government after the delimitation. It is now a completely peaceful, safe, and vibrant settlement. The ancient churches are being restored or renovated,” the Prime Minister emphasized.

Pashinyan added that he personally organizes citizen visits and tours to Kirants to show people what he means by peace and by a “Real Armenia.”

“The symbol I carry on my chest is the internationally recognized territory of the Republic of Armenia,” he said, referring to the pin of the map of Armenia he wears on his suit.

“It is also a symbol of peace because we have established peace with Azerbaijan by recognizing each other’s territorial integrity, sovereignty, and political independence based on the Alma-Ata Declaration of December 21, 1991, whereby Soviet Azerbaijan became independent Azerbaijan and Soviet Armenia became independent Armenia. This outlines the map of independent Armenia. I would not normally address the issue of the involvement of certain clergymen in this peace process if I had not seen how their emissaries, together with certain lobby organizations, have attempted to spread claims in the European Parliament and other reputable international institutions that the Armenian government restricts freedom of conscience, that there is tyranny in Armenia, or that there are political prisoners in Armenia. The truth is that some clergymen, who cynically violated all rules of spiritual morality—thereby making themselves vulnerable to foreign intelligence services, and in some cases, documents prove they were Soviet KGB agents—have taken leadership of the war party in Armenia. They gathered around them former Armenian leaders, certain allied forces, and some Russia-based or pro-Belarus oligarchs, attempting to sacrifice Armenia’s independence for the interests of other countries.

“We will not allow a new conflict or a new war. We will not allow the awareness, peace, and independence won at the cost of thousands of lives to be sacrificed for anti-Christian purposes. In the liturgy of the Armenian Apostolic Church, the word ‘peace’ is mentioned more than 40 times. This is not only about personal or spiritual peace but also about world peace, for which our liturgical texts contain dozens of prayers to our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Today, however, some use the altar of Christ to preach conflict, war, and/or internal violence, violating the laws of the Republic of Armenia. This cannot be tolerated in any democratic country,” Pashinyan said.