Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan hosted Artsakh Republic President Arayik Harutyunyan in the Office of Government.

Greeting the President of the Republic of Artsakh, the Prime Minister said: “Honorable Mr. President, I welcome you to Yerevan, this is our first meeting after the end of hostilities. Of course, we went through hard times together, we made some tough decisions and now, as agreed, we have to focus on getting back to normal life in Artsakh, getting our compatriots back and creating appropriate conditions.

The Armenian government has already taken a number of decisions on financial assistance to our compatriots in Artsakh. Of course, these efforts will continue. You may know that I have published a roadmap; we discussed it together. Our main task is to restore normal life in Artsakh, provide social guarantees to the families of our perished servicemen and citizens, identify the missing persons as soon as possible, provide social guarantees for disabled servicemen and citizens, as well as to render social and psychological assistance, in general.

Armenia and Artsakh need a large amount of investments in the wake of the war, and we have to work together to secure these investments. We will keep in close touch, but we can clarify further during meetings like this.”

Arayik Harutyunyan noted in his remarks: “Honorable Mr. Prime Minister, thank you for the meeting. In fact, we had the opportunity to talk about the current situation not only on a daily basis, but also during the war and in the post-war period. Today, I would like to stress that the repatriation of our compatriots is going on at a fairly high pace. According to the registration center, 25,000 people returned within just 5 days and the process continues. Of course, we will discuss road traffic and safety issues with you.

I would like to thank the Government of the Republic of Armenia for responding to our social problems. I would also like to thank you for the programs planned for the coming days. Several social programs will be implemented in the coming days, in particular, every citizen of Artsakh who moved to the Republic of Armenia will receive financial aid, and our compatriots who lost their apartments will be given a lump sum of 300 thousand drams. Yes, these and other programs will alleviate social tensions.

I would like to extend special gratitude to our compatriots living in the Republic of Armenia who hosted Artsakh residents during these one and a half months; they neither saw nor felt any problems. But, as the weather gets colder and the costs of utilities increase, we are trying to reimburse part of utility costs through the operational headquarters in Yerevan, including our compatriots in Armenia who provided supplies, property, hotels or facilities. We have a lot of work to do in this regard.

First, we plan to resettle our compatriots in Artsakh who have the opportunity to stay, and those who have lost their homes will be resettled in stages so that we can accommodate them and address their social problems in the process. I am confident that incoming investments will help us tackle the social problems in the near future, and we will be able to jointly implement the planned social-economic programs.”