Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan has stated that Nagorno-Karabakh has always been part of Azerbaijan, and that the Republic of Armenia also recognized Nagorno-Karabakh as part of Azerbaijan, but this was concealed from the people of Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh.

“Two days ago, the Chairman of the Urban Development Committee visited and presented a report. In 2000—I don’t remember exactly which year, maybe 2005–06, or perhaps 2010 or 2015—a process took place in Armenia to approve a resettlement program, and the attached documents include official papers of the Government of the Republic of Armenia. In those documents, the eastern borders of the Republic of Armenia are delineated as recorded in the initialed peace agreement [August 8, 2025], and to the east of that, it is written in large letters: ‘Azerbaijan.’ This is an official document of the Government of the Republic of Armenia.

This is an obvious fact. What is our problem? Essentially, the reality was concealed from the people of Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh. Why was this reality hidden? Why was the reality of the 1996 Lisbon Summit concealed? Now the documents have been fully published. Why is there no outcry about these documents? Because everything has been published, and the whole truth has been presented to the people. But that truth still has room to develop—that this whole story was about preventing Armenia from being an independent state.

And this process was led by Levon Ter-Petrosyan, then Robert Kocharyan, then Serzh Sargsyan, and now they have brought in their affiliated Russian-Belarusian oligarchs, realizing that they have [run out of leverage],” Pashinyan said.