Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan delivered a New Year's message, which said:

"Dear people,

Dear compatriots,

Here comes the year 2022, and in few minutes 2023 will knock at our doors, opening a new era in the life of each of us and our country.

This is why we love the New Year: it is a cosmic and psychological threshold, on this side of which we hope to leave all our failures, all our mistakes and losses and hope to see our dreams come true.

This childish notion of New Year's Eve accompanies a person throughout his life, until the moment when one understands that a dream can otherwise be called a strategy, and the fulfillment of a dream a plan of action, the realization of which is exclusively your prerogative, and you must rely on yourself, exclusively on yourself, and therefore your dream and your actions must be specific, extremely concrete, measurable and achievable.

This is probably what the great Yeghishe Charents had in mind when he wrote the novel "The Land of Nairi" which is little read and has a message not understood by everybody, and today we probably bear the heavy consequences of having read it little and understood it even less. The public activity of the giant of Armenian thought and soul, Hovhannes Tumanyan, is even less understood, and this oblivion has distorted our idea of national and state interest.

I would like to declare 2023 the year of reading Charents' and Tumanyan's strategic works as a key message and strategy for nation building, as a recipe for reconciliation with ourselves, as a way to formulate our dreams as strategy and a way to perceive strategy as dreams, as a tool for understanding what is happening to us these days. And what is happening is this: we are fighting for an independent, sovereign, prosperous and secure state, exactly a state. We are in a biblical exodus and we are walking through the desert, moving from the Land of Nairi to the Republic of Armenia, which has a very clear shape and a very clear area of 29,800 square kilometers. It is a difficult and dangerous, but also unavoidable path for the sake of salvation, for the sake of the Republic, for the sake of statehood.

There is only one formula for solving the very pragmatic task of having a sovereign, strong and secure state: we must be able to change the quality of our relations in our region, first of all in our region, and this is extremely difficult from the political, historical and socio-psychological point of view, in an atmosphere where we are very often threatened, very often wounded and very often killed.

But today we are talking about our own actions, not the actions of others, and the formula for action is the same: to love the homeland according to Charents and Tumanyan. It means to love the Republic of Armenia as our Motherland and to base all our actions, dreams and strategies on that love.

Dear Nation,

Dear Compatriots,

The year 2022 was a year of serious challenges. The illegal blockade of the Lachin corridor has put our brothers and sisters in Nagorno-Karabakh and all of us in a difficult situation. I have spoken many times about the political assessment of this situation and possible solutions. Now I want to hug our brothers and sisters under blockade tightly and tell them that they are important recipients of the message of changing the quality of relations in the region, and this is an exceptional time for all of us to reflect.

The aggression against the sovereign territory of Armenia from May 2021 to September 13, 2022 was doubly painful because our security allies left us alone, choosing to remain in passive observer status or offering active observer status as an alternative.

But we were not left alone in the world and I would like to thank those countries and international organizations which were not indifferent to the situation and, without any commitment to our country, took unprecedented decisions in support of establishing security and stability in our region.

And most importantly, today I bow before all our martyrs, their parents and their families, their children, and my appeal is first and foremost directed to them, those who are the most important symbols of Armenia's future because they died so that Armenia might live, they fell so that Armenia might be reborn.

That's why, that's why our response to the global and regional storms, new challenges to security is asymmetric. The more challenges escalate, the more we focus on the institutional, social, economic, political, and democratic reforms, on the development agenda, because that is the only way to enhance our sustainability today and ensure tomorrow's prosperity.

In this sense, 2022 was a year of exceptional achievements. Armenia ranked 11th in the global Index of Economic Freedom, gaining international recognition as a leading country in investment and economic freedom. It was the result of the fact that despite all the difficulties, the government remained committed to carrying out systematic reforms.
As a result, we are closing the year with double-digit economic growth, which in a year of global crisis is exceptional at the world level and, as in 2019, will raise the international profile of the Republic of Armenia.
The number of registered jobs in Armenia exceeded 700,000: again an unprecedented result in the history of the Third Republic. Thus, we can state that since the victory of the People's Velvet Nonviolent Revolution in 2018, about 153 thousand new jobs have been created in Armenia. It is important to note that compared to last November, the average salary per worker in November this year increased by about 45 thousand drams or 20 percent, which means that fears that Armenia will face a social crisis in the face of global inflation were not justified.
On the contrary, the Republic of Armenia is experiencing a construction boom, a housing boom. Tens of thousands of families are buying apartments in new buildings, including those supported by the government. In 2022 we returned 36.5 billion drams in income tax to the families buying apartments, in addition to 22.7 billion drams of the previous year.
Additionally, thousands of young families have taken advantage of the mortgage loan assistance program in case of having a child: in 2022 the amount of support by this program reached 2.1 billion AMD. More than 10,000 children receive monthly state aid of 50,000 drams for the third and each subsequent child.
I have to mention our program for construction of 300 schools and 500 kindergartens, which has been launched and gains momentum. During 2022 we have already commissioned 24 schools and 46 kindergartens, which have been overhauled, reconstructed or newly built. Hundreds of new schools and kindergartens are under construction, reconstruction or overhaul. This is an integral part of the institutional reforms underway in the country, which have not only an educational, managerial, security, but also a profound historical and socio-psychological context.
The large-scale reforms that we are implementing in the police system are important, the most visible result of which is the introduction in Armenia of the Patrol Police with its new standards.
The profound and comprehensive reforms launched in the Army are of key importance. We have started to build up an army of competent, patriotic and professional soldiers and officers complying with modern requirements and conditions, and in parallel, we must at least double salaries of the military servicemen, create a social security system for the servicemen and their family members, and buy new weapons and new equipment. But we need such an army not for war, but for peace, to protect our sovereignty and territorial integrity. We are not encroaching on someone else's land and we expect that others will not encroach on our land either, and by this formula we are ready to go for peace.
I also find very important the large-scale events held in Armenia in 2022: European Boxing Championship, Junior Eurovision, Starmus International Festival, International Olympics in Biology. These events will put us before the world in a new way and the world will recognize Armenia in a new way.
Dear nation,
My dear citizens of the Republic of Armenia,
We are accomplishing all this first of all through an unprecedented increase in the tax revenues to the state budget. State budget tax revenues in 2022 were 1 trillion 925 billion drams, which is 670 billion drams, or 53 percent, or $1.5 billion more than the same figure in 2018. But this indicator is primarily achieved thanks to the working people, the people who create good things, the tax-paying economic entities of the Republic of Armenia, and I want to thank them for considering the taxes paid to the state budget not as financial losses, but as an investment in the future of their state, in their future and in the future of their children.
It is with these funds that in 2022 we repaired over 500 kilometers of roads, began the process of doubling teachers' salaries, for the first time in the history of the Third Republic we launched a satellite into space, purchased new buses and trolleybuses for the capital, raised the minimum wage as promised, created an airline, raised scientists' salaries, increased funding for science by 150 percent compared to 2018, raised pensions from September 2022 and will raise them again from July 2023. At the same time, we have returned some 527 million drams to pensioners and beneficiaries through the cashback program, and I would like to express special gratitude to the banks, which participate equally with the state in this program.

Thanks to these additional budgets, we served 786,000 patients in 2022 in medical care under the state contract, more than doubling compared to 2017, by 437,000 cases or 125 percent.

And why are we doing all this? For one reason, only and only one reason: because we love you, we love our country. I love you all, I love our country, our state, and where I make mistakes and stumble, where I fail, maybe because of too much love, which maybe clouds the mind. But in the end, love is almighty, and we will bring our ship, our Republic of Armenia, which is caught in a stormy ocean, to a peaceful harbor.

And consequently,

Long live liberty,

Long live the Republic of Armenia,

Long live our children, for they live and will live in free and happy Armenia!

Happy New Year and Merry Christmas!"