Armenia already had intelligence services operating within its National Security Service (NSS) and military when the National Assembly approved last December the creation of the Foreign Intelligence Service (FIS). The NSS division is supposed to be fully replaced by the FIS within three years. The new agency directly subordinate to Pashinian has still not officially started its operations.
“The main task of the service is to forecast opportunities and external threats to the state and society and to provide political decision-makers with reliable, credible intelligence information about them,” Pashinian’s press secretary, Nazeli Baghdasarian told the Armenpress news agency following Grigorian’s appointment announced on Wednesday.
Grigorian unexpectedly resigned as ombudswoman in January after less than a year in office. She said at the time that she is planning to move on to another job.
The 42-year-old lawyer, who has never worked for security agencies before, has not been seen in public since then. A senior pro-government lawmaker, Gagik Melkonian confirmed rumors that she underwent relevant training before taking up her new post.
“He has been trained but I don’t know where,” Melkonian told the Hraparak daily. “She came back and got appointed.”
Citing another, unnamed source, the paper claimed that Grigorian was trained by “Western intelligence services.” It noted that the chief of Britain's foreign intelligence agency, Richard Moore, visited Yerevan and met with Pashinian just days before the Armenian government pushed a bill on the FIS through the parliament. U.S. Central Intelligence Agency Director William Burns visited Armenia in July 2022.
Grigorian could not be reached for comment, and nothing is known about the structure and size of her nascent agency. Nor have Pashinian and his political allies explained the choice of the FIS chief.
Grigorian’s appointment came amid mounting tensions between Armenia and Russia. The parliament controlled by Pashinian’s party added to those tensions on Tuesday when it approved a government proposal to ratify the founding treaty of an international court that issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin in March. The move was condemned by Russia but welcomed by the European Union.