Armenia’s newly established Foreign Intelligence Service (FIS) is seeking direct access to state secrets, a move that could further reduce the powers of the National Security Service (NSS).
Under current Armenian law, the NSS has the exclusive authority to share classified information with other state agencies, including the FIS. However, a new bill proposed by the FIS would allow it to access state secrets directly, without needing permission or assistance from the NSS. The bill argues that this change would improve the FIS’s ability to carry out its tasks, strictly for intelligence-gathering purposes.
The bill is set to be reviewed by the Armenian government before being sent to parliament for approval. Analysts believe the government is unlikely to oppose it.
Over the past two years, the government has already reduced the NSS’s powers. In late 2022, an agency responsible for providing bodyguards to top state officials was removed from the NSS’s control and placed directly under the authority of Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan. Additionally, in early 2023, the NSS lost a division that investigated serious cases of corruption, smuggling, and drug trafficking, with those responsibilities being transferred to Armenia’s Investigative Committee.
The FIS began its operations around the same time. Opposition leaders and critics see its creation as another weakening of the NSS, the successor of the Armenian branch of the Soviet KGB. Armenia already had intelligence services operating within the NSS and the Defense Ministry, and some of Pashinyan’s critics have linked the creation of the FIS to his attempts to shift Armenia’s foreign policy away from Russia and toward the West.
A senior pro-government lawmaker confirmed that Kristine Grigoryan, the FIS director, received training abroad before taking up the position. According to a report in an Armenian newspaper, Grigoryan was trained by “Western intelligence services” after unexpectedly resigning as Armenia’s human rights ombudsperson in January 2023.
The head of Britain’s foreign intelligence agency, Richard Moore, visited Yerevan and met with Pashinyan just days before the Armenian parliament passed a government bill on the FIS in December 2022. The two also met in Munich in February 2023. U.S. Central Intelligence Agency Director William Burns and his deputy, David Cohen, also visited Armenia in July 2022 and May 2024, respectively.
