Nikol Pashinyan

Nikol Pashinyan is married to Anna Hakobyan, his colleague at 'Haykakan Zhamanak', whom he had first met while studying journalism. The couple have four children together, including son Ashot and daughters Arpi and Shushan.

During the time when Nikol was underground for 16 months, Anna had taken charge of the newspaper. She mentioned in a recent interview that a security services officer had moved into their apartment to check if he showed up.

Nikol Pashinyan was born on June 1st, 1975 in Ijevan, Armenian SSR, Soviet Union. In the early 1990s, he moved to the capital, Yerevan, to study journalism.

A bright student, he got straight A's in his class, but was unable to finish his studies after the authorities expelled him for missing classes. His classmates later revealed to news outlets that the actual reason why he was kicked out was that he brought up corruption allegations against superiors in an article published in a newspaper.

In 1994, Nikol Pashinyan began his career as a journalist, working for several daily newspapers like 'Newspaper Day' and 'Molorak' ('Planet'), and worked as the Chief Editor of the 'Oragir' ('Diary'/'Blog') daily between 1998 and 1999. After 'Blog' was closed by the authorities in 1999, Pashinyan, with his own efforts, established the new daily newspaper, 'Haykakan Zhamanak', which is seen as a logical continuation of the 'Blog' daily.

He remained the chief editor of 'Haykakan Zhamanak' till the Armenian presidential election protest of March 1, 2008, following which he went into hiding, giving the post to Anna Hakobyan. After his release from prison, he briefly served as the chief editor in 2011 before leaving the post due to being elected as MP in May 2012.

He was politically aligned with Armenia's first president, Levon Ter-Petrosyan, who served his term from 1991 to 1998, and supported him when he decided to run during the February 2008 presidential elections. After Ter-Petrosyan lost to Republican Party chairman Serzh Sargsyan in a disputed vote, he led a series of mass protests against voting fraud.

The Armenian security forces violently dispersed the protesters, attacking them with guns and grenades while they were sleeping, according to witnesses, and claimed that they were thwarting an attempted coup. The death of 10 people during the handling of the protesters by the security forces caused Pashinyan to call for a proper investigation into the deaths and appropriate punishment.

During a crackdown on the opposition, Ter-Petrosyan was captured at Freedom Square and put under house arrest, but Pashinyan was able to go into hiding and remain underground for several months. In a later interview to a state-run TV channel, he mentioned that it was "shameful" that the National Security Service could not locate him while he spent most of the time hiding in Yerevan.

Nikol Pashinyan has led a successful political movement to overthrow Prime Minister Serzh Sargsyan, whose reign he had rejected as illegitimate. Despite constant harassments from the government, defamation lawsuits, and even an assassination attempt, the fearless and upright journalist went on to become the Prime Minister of the Republic of Armenia on May 8, 2018.