Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan held a meeting on Friday with Richard Moore, the head of Britain’s foreign intelligence agency, on the sidelines of the annual Munich Security Conference.
Pashinyan’s press office issued a brief statement regarding the encounter, refraining from disclosing specific agenda items or further details of their discussion in the southern German city.
Moore, who oversees the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), commonly known as MI6, had previously engaged with Pashinyan during an unexpected trip to Yerevan in December 2022. At that time, the Armenian government indicated that their conversation encompassed “processes taking place in the South Caucasus.”
The British intelligence chief’s visit to the Armenian capital occurred just days after his meeting with Armen Grigorian, the pro-Western secretary of Armenia’s Security Council, in London. Following this sequence of events, Pashinyan’s administration successfully shepherded a bill through parliament, paving the way for the establishment of an Armenian foreign intelligence service.
In July 2022, William Burns, Director of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, also visited Armenia for discussions with Pashinyan, though few specifics of their dialogue were disclosed to the public.
In recent years, relations between Russia and Armenia have experienced a notable downturn, with Yerevan accusing Moscow of failing to uphold security commitments and emphasizing the necessity to “diversify” Armenia’s foreign and security policies. The tensions between the two historic allies escalated further following Azerbaijan’s reclamation of Nagorno-Karabakh in September of the previous year. Moscow has since repeatedly criticized Pashinyan, attributing blame to him for the deterioration of Russian-Armenian relations.
