Civil Contract party leader Nikol Pashinyan said during the launch of his campaign in Syunik that the Karabakh movement must come to an end.

“Factors connected to the Karabakh movement were used for years to prevent the progress of our state. We made a very important conclusion. We made a very difficult decision, and that decision is to stop the Karabakh movement,” he said during a meeting with residents of Kornidzor, according to Sputnik Armenia.

Pashinyan stated that the current authorities are often accused of losing territories, but argued that such criticism is unfair because those territories “were never ours for us to lose them.”

“We convinced ourselves that they were ours. Those territories not only did not belong to us, but they were also used to weaken, weaken and weaken our sense of ownership and belonging regarding our internationally recognized territories,” Pashinyan added.

The Civil Contract candidate for prime minister also said that Armenia had been trapped since the first day of its independence, and that his political force had the courage to confront that reality and lead the state out of the trap.

Armenia’s next parliamentary elections will be held on June 7, 2026. Nineteen political forces — including two alliances and 17 parties — have applied to participate in the elections. The official campaign period began on May 8.