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“The year 2021 has been the first post-war year, during which our country has had the most serious failures and the most serious achievements,” the Prime Minister of the Republic of Armenia Nikol Pashinyan said while presenting the report approved by the N 234-A decision on the procedure and the results of the implementation of the Government Programme of the Republic of Armenia (2021-2026) for 2021 of February 28, 2022 at April 13 NA sitting about this.

Speaking about the achievements, the Prime Minister underlined the snap parliamentary elections, adding that Armenia not only had overcome the internal political crisis through electoral process, but also by the assessment of the international institutes: passed from the series of the countries with electoral authoritarianism to the series of the countries with electoral democracy. According to the Prime Minister, the most important achievement has also been the ensuring of macro-economic stability. The tax revenues of the state budget for 2021 were overdone by 147 bln AMD against the planned ones at the beginning of the year. “In the post-war crisis year the Government not only decreased the expenditures, but also had an opportunity to finance additional expenditures,” the Head of the Government noted, adding that the considerable part of them had been directed to the solution of the social-economic problems of Artsakh.

Nikol Pashinyan voiced that from November 2020 until the end of 2021 the Government of Armenia implemented programme of 136 bln AMD in Artsakh, and designed financing 144 bln AMD by the budget in 2022. The RA Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan assured that before Armenia never showed support to Artsakh, as it does now.

During the financial year, unprecedented volume of capital expenditures was carried out – 100% against the planned one of the beginning of the year. According to Pashinyan, this index has never been in the history of Armenia.

Speaking about war and its aftermath, the Prime Minister said: “From the beginning I have accepted my sin and the responsibility for the war and for the defeat. But I have not accepted and I do not accept the accusations that they address me the opposition after November 9, 2020, accusing me in handing over the lands and thus in betrayal.”

The RA Prime Minister has recorded that Armenia has never had territorial demands from Azerbaijan, and the issue of Karabakh is a matter of not the territory, but the right.

The RA Prime Minister touched upon in detail the racist policy pursued by Azerbaijan. Talking about the very process of the peace negotiations, Nikol Pashinyan said that in Brussels the Foreign Ministers of Armenia and Azerbaijan were assigned to begin the preparatory work of the future peace treaty.

The Prime Minister has recorded that today the international community shows readiness to support the process.

Nikol Pashinyan noted that Armenia repeatedly announced about the readiness of launching the peace treaty process.

Touching upon the failures of 2021, the Head of the Government spoke about the invasion of the Azerbaijani military sub-units into the sovereign territory of the Republic of Armenia, Sotk-Khoznavar part.

“Why did this failure happen? To get the answer to this question perhaps we should observe what happened in the background of a number of important events preceding it.

On May 10, 2021 the National Assembly of the Republic of Armenia was dissolved by the force of law, and our country turned into a phase of snap parliamentary elections, and it is clear that after two days one of the motivations of the happened invasion was to make collapse the state institutes and the statehood of Armenia, causing pre-electoral and post-electoral chaos and having concrete influence on the results of the elections. We can directly say that it was also an attack on the democracy of Armenia.

But the context of May invasion is incomplete, if we take into consideration the events happened in February, when the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Armenia evidently was involved in the politics, spreading an announcement demanding the resignation of the Government. We should record that the opposition, whose leader before confessed that he was calling on the generals during the war to direct the rifle butts not to the adversary, but to the Government building of Armenia, finally reached its goal and it became clear that there are forces in the army that are not interested more in what’s happening on the border, but in the Republic Square, in Baghramyan Avenue, Melik-Adamyan Street,” the Prime Minister noted.

Despite the failures, there were also visible results of reforms in 2021.

Nikol Pashinyan has stated that after the non-violent, velvet, people’s revolution in 2018 Armenia continues remaining a country of half-empty criminal-procedure institutions.

“On the previous week the criminal statistics of the Council of Europe of 2021 was published. Accordingly, Armenia is classified among the countries with the lowest index by the density of prison population – for 100 places there are 36.8 persons. During this period two criminal-procedure institutions were closed in Armenia. I cannot but underline the political meaning of this index, and this is an index special for a democratic country and an index for a democratic country,” Nikol Pashinyan said.

The Prime Minister has said that unusual and supernatural efforts are required for defending and preserving our statehood, independence, the sovereignty and territorial integrity.

“We need a civil and national unity built around our state interest. We need new formulations for way of thinking, and we should get our ship appeared in this stormy geopolitical ocean to a peaceful destination. And I am convinced we’ll do that. And that is our historical mission,” the Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan concluded his speech.