Nikol Pashinyan (born 1 June 1975) was Prime Minister of Armenia from 8 May 2018, succeeding Karen Karapetyan. He was an opposition leader from the Civil Contract party, and he led the 2018 Armenian revolution against Serzh Sargsyan, after which he became Prime Minister.
Biography[]
Nikol Pashinyan was born in Ijevan, Armenian SSR, Soviet Union in 1975, and he became a prominent journalist, founding his own newspaper in 1998. His newspaper was shut down a year later, and he was sentenced to one year in prison for defamation against Minister of National Security Serzh Sargsyan. From 1999 to 2012, Pashinyan edited Haykakan Zhamanak, and he was sympathetic to President Levon Ter-Petrosyan and was critical of Robert Kocharyan and his allied oligarchs. He emerged as an opposition leader to Sargsyan due to his fiery speeches, and he led various protests against Sargsyan's corrupt government, organizing mass disorders. He later broke from Ter-Petrosyan on political grounds, establishing Civil Contract and, later, the Way Out Alliance. Pashinyan led the 2018 Armenian revolution, forcing Sargsyan to resign, and he was elected Prime Minister on 8 May 2018. In 2020, he was forced to defend Armenia from an Azerbaijani attempt to reconquer the Nagorno-Karabakh region in the deadly 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, and he mobilized Armenia's reserves and encouraged rising nationalist sentiment in his country.