Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan today attended a ceremonious event in Vardenis town of Gegharkunik Marz dedicated to the 28th anniversary of the formation of the Armed Forces of the Republic of Armenia.

The Premier delivered congratulatory remarks, in which he stated:
“Your Holiness Catholicos of All Armenians,
Dear Minister of Defense,
Members of government,
Government officials,
Foreign diplomats accredited in Armenia,
Officers and military personnel,
Proud citizens of the Republic of Armenia,

Congratulations to all of us on the 28th anniversary of the formation of the Armenian Army!

This day is of particular importance on our calendar, since it symbolizes the Armenian people’s right to life. As a nation that survived the first genocide in the 20th century, our people should clearly state that we have earned the right to live in our homeland thanks to the Armenian army and the liberation war.

What is our homeland today? Our homeland is a territory in the rear behind the shoulders of the soldier standing on the border. Every square meter of our homeland is impregnated with the blood of perished freedom-fighters. A psychological change has occurred in the minds of our people over the past hundred years. At the beginning of the 20th century, the entire territory of our country was flooded with the blood of innocent and unarmed genocide victims.

As early as by the end of the 20th century, the Armenian people decided that they would no longer be victims of genocide, and we would only die with arms in our hands, only while defending our right and the right of our descendants to life.

Our Motherland today is the rear of a soldier standing on the border, and we all need to ask ourselves the same question: what are we doing in the rear of a soldier in our Homeland? What are we doing on earth, where the bodies of our thousands of martyrs rest? And this is precisely the question that I myself as the Prime Minister of the Republic of Armenia and the members of my government, government officials should ask themselves every day on the way to work.

Over the past year and a half, we have taken many steps to increase the combat effectiveness of the Armed Forces, improve the conditions of military service and solve social problems.

I do not want to repeat what I said in my New Year’s address about the purchase of new armaments, but I want to emphasize that the Republic of Armenia and the Armenian Army closed the page of “armaments produced in the 1980s.” Both the government and the people of Armenia today can confidently afford the necessary funds to ensure their own security. And I want to emphasize once again that every entrepreneur, every citizen must be aware that when delivering any unregistered product, for any transaction without a cash register receipt, directly or indirectly, voluntarily or involuntarily, steals from our army and from our soldier.

I am glad that over the past year and a half, the government and the citizens of Armenia managed to boost state revenues by an amount equivalent to more than USD 1 billion. And a very large portion of this money is being spent to improve our soldiers’ service conditions, starting from the conditions of service in the positions and ending with the new power supply system in military units.

We offered the military the opportunity to get new housing on low-interest mortgage. We have earmarked over 8 billion drams to solve the housing problems of army veterans. I mean those in respect of whom the state has official commitments.

Today, the parents of conscripts have the opportunity to get high-quality medical treatment as part of state order. The efforts aimed at boosting the efficiency of the Armed Forces, improving the armaments and conditions of service will be an integral part of our policy.

I am pleased to note that the wages of the military personnel serving in the Armenian Army saw a tangible rise on June 1, 2019. I am pleased to emphasize that our army is growing more and more confident in its power day by day, and the nation becomes more and more confident in the power of the Armenian army every day.

And I want to emphasize a very important point - there is no doubt that the Motherland is proud of its soldier, its army, but I want to add to this that every soldier, every officer should be proud of the Motherland, should be proud while seeing the developments underway in our homeland, because the Armenian army won the homeland not for us to lose it, but for us to hand over to the rising generation a safe, developed, powerful, and self-confident country.

Dear attendees,

With your permission, I would like to complete my speech with a poem that I wrote on May 19, 2016, as a volunteer of the Armenian Army. The poem is entitled “Armenian troops on the plain.” The Prime Minister read out his poem “Armenian troops on the plain.”

Prime Minister Pashinyan laid a wreath at the memorial to those soldiers who died in World War II and the Artsakh Liberation War.