President Armen Sarkissian

Speaking at the 2020 Global Manufacturing and Industrialization Summit over the weekend, Armenia’s President Armen Sarkissian condemned the Azerbaijani military attack on Armenia during the global COVID-19 pandemic.

The topic of the online summit was “Restoring Prosperity in a Post-Pandemic World.”

“Just recently while Armenia was fighting the coronavirus and our neighbor Azerbaijan was also fighting the coronavirus, Azerbaijan launched military maneuvers on the border with Armenia,” said Sarkissian asking “where is the common sense?”

He also decried Turkey’s destructive rhetoric at the time of the July attacks.

“That [Ankara’s posturing] concerns me as an Armenian, as a President because it takes me back 105 years ago when the Armenian Genocide happened in the Ottoman Empire. And it gives me more concern because some Azerbaijani officials were speaking about bombing the Armenian nuclear power plant, which is unheard of, because at the end of the day when you bomb a nuclear power plant it will hurt not only Armenia but it will hurt everybody, every neighbor we have around,” stressed Sarkissian.

“My hope is that during this transition, we don’t lose our common sense,” added the president, emphasizing that the world needs to value what it has created in the past, and focus on the future.

In discussing the pandemic, Sarkissian pointed out that the concentration of people in big cities creates conditions for the rapid spread of such a virus. He emphasized that the coronavirus is a consequence and not the reason for the changes happening around the world.

“At times of uncertainty, if you lose your common sense for your human dignity or your humanity it is very easy to become xenophobic, it’s very easy to blame others for your failures and I see now in this world problems that are occurring because we are in transition,” said Sarkissian.