Pashinyan Wrote His UN Speech on the Plane
He posted a toothbrush from the gift bag, then started writing his UN speech on the plane.
In this clip, Harut Sassounian walks through a sequence of Facebook posts he says Pashinyan made on his way to the UN General Assembly. It starts at the Yerevan airport, continues as Pashinyan boards and walks to his seat, and then takes an almost comic turn when Pashinyan pulls a toothbrush and other items from an airline gift bag and shows them to the camera. The hosts fill in a detail: socks. It is the kind of small, human, slightly absurd scene that makes for instantly shareable video.
The anecdote turns serious when Sassounian describes the next post: Pashinyan typing his UN speech on his laptop during the flight. Sassounian says this genuinely alarmed him. He asks how the leader of any country can address the world at the General Assembly without a speech prepared at home, without input from advisors or speechwriters, writing it instead while tired and jet-lagged on a roughly thirteen-hour flight to New York.
The moment blends humor and critique, which is why it works as a clip. It humanizes a political complaint and makes it accessible to viewers who do not follow the fine detail of Armenian politics. It also connects to the episode’s broader argument that Pashinyan governs as a one-man show, makes major decisions without consulting advisors, and leans heavily on constant social media performance. For audiences interested in Armenian politics, the Civil Contract government, and how Armenia presents itself at the United Nations, this is a memorable, quotable scene. Sassounian is careful elsewhere in the episode to credit Pashinyan where he thinks credit is due, which makes his alarm here read as sincere rather than reflexive.
Transcript
Harut Sassounian: Then, a little bit later, he's back on Facebook, in the plane, I guess he has Wi-Fi connection, he has his laptop in front of him, he's typing, and he says, I'm typing my speech at the UN for tomorrow. Now, when I saw that, I really got very upset and angry and very worried, because how can the Prime Minister of any country in the world General Assembly, he's going to address the world on all sorts of supposedly important issues. He doesn't have his speech written at home when he's rested and focused on the issue and doesn't have any of his advisors giving input or speech writers, God forbid, which he probably doesn't have. so he's writing his speech tired, exhausted jet lag on the plane to New York from Yerevan all the way to New York which is probably like 13 hours or something and it's a very important speech addressing the world and he's writing on the plane it really concerned me a lot