‘Lie is Pashinyan’s credo,' says former national security chief

A former Director of the National Security Service (NSS) blamed Armenia’s acting prime minister of populism and lies as he sat down for a live interview with Vladimir Solovyov, a high-profile Russian journalist and TV anchor, to talk about the country’s domestic political affairs and the Armenian-Russian relations. 

Artur Vanetsyan, who was in charge of the agency for almost a year and a half after the 2018 “Velvet Revolution”, dismissed Nikol Pashinyan’s repeated claims accusing him of failures in last year’s Nagorno-Karabakh (Artsakh) war (particularly, the handover of the fortress town of Shushi to Azerbaijan). “Pashinyan, who unfortunately still holds the office of the prime minister of Armenia, permanently lies, as lie is his credo. He lies all the time; it is because of his lies that we all the time run into the worst challenges in Armenia,” the leader of the pre-electoral alliance I Have the Honor said.    

Asked to elaborate further on his concerns – given that Pashinyan himself appointed Vanetsyan to the high-ranking office shortly after the political transitions – the former NSS director said, “He appointed me to the office after the so-called ‘revolution’, which took place in Armenia in 2018. People – and I am not afraid to give my evaluation and say the whole people – well, the majority of the people at least, backed Pashinyan at the time. And he came to power through the street, ‘through revolutionary processes’ so to speak. There was a share of populism which, as I used to think, could have been guided in the right way to use the people’s trust and belief (i.e. - that everything will is going to be fine) to make Armenia really prosperous,” he emphasized.