Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan on Monday had visited Yerevan State University (YSU), where he had met with students and faculty. And on Wednesday Pashinyan posted an excerpt from that meeting on his Facebook page.

A YSU student asked the PM: “What do you think? If you could go back to 2018, knowing the current situation of the Republic of Armenia, your weak legitimacy, the loss of Artsakh [(Nagorno-Karabakh)], bad relations with allies, the conflict with representatives of the Armenian Apostolic Church, would you have embarked on the 2018 revolution again? And the second question: not agreeing with your position on the Artsakh conflict and the Armenian Genocide, as well as the concept of a ‘real Armenia,’ I am interested in whether the [university] student Nikol Pashinyan had the same opinion during his student years that he has after the disaster of 2020.”

In response, Nikol Pashinyan said: “If I had the opinions now that I had during my student years, it would mean at least that my worldview and intellectual horizons have not developed. It would mean that I remained in the third year [of university]. (…).”

Also,  the Armenian premier said that after the 2020 war, he has returned every day for a very long time to 2018.

“Do you know what I understood? What I record? That we lost a part of our homeland on the scale as a result of the 44-day war, but we gained a state that is more sovereign, more independent, more self-sufficient. I do not want this theory to sound like another beautifully worded sentence, but I want to say it with a concrete example. March 1, 2025 is the day as of which the Republic of Armenia border troops carry out service at all border crossing points of the Republic of Armenia. It seems very logical, right? Why should we be surprised that we are bragging about it? We are an independent state, naturally our border guards should stand at our border.

I made that decision in 2024. Could I have made that decision in 2019, when it seemed that I was much stronger and much more solid politically and in all respects? No, I could not have made that decision in 2018, in 2019, in 2020. I simply could not have. It was even very difficult to think that such a thing could happen. But in 2024, I could and did make that decision. We have thanked the Russian Federation for the support it has provided us during this time, but we have said that, ‘You know what, we have matured as a state, we can control our border points ourselves," Nikol Pashinyan said.