It feels like people like me are remembered when the situation worsens. Robert Kocharyan, the second President and leader of the “Armenia” bloc—which will run in the snap parliamentary elections on June 20—, stated this during a meeting with the residents and this bloc’s active members at three administrative districts of the capital Yerevan.

“I was the head of the state defense committee in Nagorno-Karabakh when half of Nagorno-Karabakh was seized by the adversary, and in May 1994, a territory that was more than three times the size of the territory of Nagorno-Karabakh was under the control of Armenians. In 1997, I became Prime Minister of Armenia, which was in a difficult economic situation. There were no revenues, people weren’t receiving pensions for months, and a teacher’s salary was AMD 5,000 ($10 today). Later, the salary skyrocketed to AMD 80,000 (roughly $100 today),” he said.

Kocharyan expressed confidence that it is possible to ensure new economic uplift in Armenia because the only thing that has to be done is to solve the artificial problems.