Nikol Pashinyan

Biography

Nikol Pashinyan was born in Ijevan in 1975. He studied journalism at Yerevan State University from 1991 but was expelled in 1995 without graduating. In 1998 he founded the daily Oragir, which was shut down after a 1999 libel case that made him the first journalist prosecuted for libel in post-Soviet Armenia, and from 1999 to 2012 he edited the opposition newspaper Haykakan Zhamanak.

A supporter of former president Levon Ter-Petrosyan, he was among the leaders of the protests after the disputed 2008 presidential election, which security forces broke up on 1 March 2008 with ten deaths. He went into hiding until 2009, was sentenced to seven years in prison and was freed in a general amnesty in 2011. He entered parliament in 2012 with the Armenian National Congress, then broke with Ter-Petrosyan and in 2013 founded Civil Contract.

In April 2018 he led the mass protests against Serzh Sargsyan's bid to stay in power as prime minister, which forced Sargsyan to resign; parliament elected Pashinyan prime minister on 8 May 2018, and his alliance won snap elections that December. He led Armenia through the 2020 war over Nagorno-Karabakh and signed the ceasefire of 9 November 2020, which cost Armenia territory and brought calls for his resignation.

He stepped down to force early elections in 2021 and won them. After the 2023 flight of Armenians from Nagorno-Karabakh he pursued a peace settlement with Azerbaijan, and he was re-elected in 2026.