One might wonder how anyone can be accused of denying the genocide when he says “genocide” when talking about the phenomenon. Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan stated this during his press conference Friday—and answering the question of whether he could imagine an official of his level in Israel questioning the reality of the Holocaust.

“Maybe there are external forces that are putting pressure on you, and you are not sharing this with the public,” a reporter remarked.

The PM said that he knows that the denial, repudiation, or refutation of the Armenian Genocide is a criminal offense in Armenia. He noted that the fact of the Armenian Genocide is indisputable and undeniable, but he meant something completely different when he had spoken about it recently.

“It’s about the following that shouldn’t the genocide prompt us to reconsider our formulas for perceiving the world? Maybe we don’t perceive the realities at the beginning of the century, in the middle of the century, at the end of the century, and today. Maybe we place too much hope in some external encouragements and incentives. Maybe we don’t calculate our attitude towards those signals well. This question is urgent today. Moreover, I don’t have an answer,” Pashinyan noted.

“Even before the genocide, during other massacres, (…), when we had formulas for perceiving the world, at various conferences, maybe those formulas are wrong, maybe those formulas are still wrong. I see such comments on today's international events, sometimes apocalyptic, sometimes redemptive, that I realize that it may turn out that our perceptions of international relations and the world have not changed (…). And it may turn out that some topics, some circles, some of our sore points have been and are being used in order to make our independent sovereign state impossible in our homeland, in Armenia,” the PM stated.

He said that he does not attempt to answer these questions because they are serious and profound questions, but simply invites people to think about them.

“Not for the sake of a mental exercise, but so that we answer our questions in such a way that the resolution is resolved as follows: The perpetuation of the Republic of Armenia with its internationally recognized territory is not only possible, but also inevitable—and it will be so,” Nikol Pashinyan concluded.