Nikol Pashinyan Parents: Meet Svetlana and Vova Pashinyan

Nikol Pashinyan is an Armenian politician serving as the prime minister of Armenia since 8 May 2018.

He is the son of Svetlana and Vova Pashinyan. His father Vova Pashinyan was a football and volleyball coach as well as a physical education teacher.

Svetlana, his mother, died when he was 12 years old, and he was primarily raised by his stepmother, Yerjanik, Vova’s second wife.

In 1991, he graduated from Ijevan Secondary School N1. Pashinyan began his career in journalism as a journalism student at YSU in 1992.

Pashinyan, a journalist by trade, launched his own newspaper in 1998, which was closed down a year later for libel.  From 1999 to 2012, he was the editor of the Armenian publication Haykakan Zhamanak (“Armenian Times”).

Nikol Pashinyan has been the prime minister of Armenia since 8 May 2018. Pashinyan led Armenia through the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh War.

The war was the most recent and serious outbreak of hostilities in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict involving Armenia, the self-proclaimed Republic of Artsakh, and Azerbaijan.

Following the war, Pashinyan was accused of being a traitor and faced protests and calls for his resignation for reaching a peace with Azerbaijan mediated by Russia.

Pashinyan announced his formal resignation on April 25, 2021, to allow for snap elections in June, however he remained acting prime minister in the run-up to the elections. His party won the 2021 election with more than half of the votes cast.