Why the NSS is Now Reporting on the Disclosure of Espionage Cases: Zhamanak

The newspaper “Zhamanak” reports: “The National Security Service of Armenia issued a statement yesterday regarding the disclosure of a case of espionage in favor of Azerbaijan. According to the announcement, a citizen of the Republic of Armenia transferred information about Armenian military units and other military objects to Turkey. It becomes clear from the NSS announcement that he was recruited by Azerbaijani services in Turkey under the guise of being an employee of the Armenian NSS. At the same time, it is clear from the NSS announcement that the agency had been monitoring the Armenian citizen for a long time, and he provided data that had already been subjected to the NSS’s relevant processes, or in other words, false information had been passed on. The NSS announcement does not provide further details, which is perhaps completely understandable.

Moreover, in such cases, announcements of disclosures are often absent altogether. However, from this perspective, it is significant that the NSS has decided to announce the disclosure of espionage activities. This at least indicates that the discovered espionage, so to speak, either failed to be used against special services or has already been consumed, after which the NSS decided to announce the disclosure of espionage.

Undoubtedly, besides the legal aspect, such cases are invariably accompanied by political circumstances. It is particularly interesting to observe under what internal and external political backdrop the NSS of Armenia is announcing the disclosure of espionage activities against Armenia, utilizing Turkey in favor of Azerbaijan.

Firstly, this occurs against the backdrop of certain activity by Azerbaijan along the borders with Armenia and Artsakh, where the Armenian side is noting an increase in the number of shots fired, resulting in two injuries, one in critical condition. Although the Armenian side is still refraining from a harsh response, the information regarding espionage activities is undoubtedly intriguing in light of Azerbaijan’s behavior.

Simultaneously, this information is being disseminated at a time when the Assistant Secretary of State for the United States, George Kent, is in Armenia, and for the first time, a session of the Armenia-US Strategic Dialogue is taking place. Kent has also held meetings with Armenia’s high military-political leadership. Has the Armenian side received any form of American assistance, even technical, regarding the disclosure of espionage activities?

Alongside this, Kent made an important statement in Armenia that all three co-chairs of the Minsk Group are in agreement on the issues of territorial integrity, self-determination of nations, and the principle of non-use of force, noting that the United States rules out any path toward a military solution to the Artsakh issue. At the same time, the external dimension is noteworthy, especially considering that Armenia is announcing Azerbaijan’s espionage against the backdrop of quite high-level Russian-American discussions currently taking place at the ministerial level in Finland, which followed a phone conversation at the presidential level.

Additionally, the background detail is the report that noted some resources in Armenia's information sphere and their anti-government and pro-Russian traces, published by the reputable American Atlantic Council research center, coinciding with the visit of the US Assistant Secretary of State to Armenia. Thus, let’s seamlessly transition to the internal context. Here, the NSS announcement correlates with two pieces of information that arrived from Artsakh. One was a message from the current and former presidents of the Republic of Artsakh, Bako Sahakyan and Arkadi Ghukasyan, to Armenia’s Prosecutor General Arthur Davtyan, seeking the release of Robert Kocharian for the Victory Day celebration and for the sake of national unity; the other was a congress organized by the ARF discussing issues of Armenia-Artsakh military-political cooperation and possible legal mechanisms.

The issue is that, judging by the predominant composition of the participants in the conference organized by the ARF, with unique exceptions, this meeting was none other than a gathering of representatives from the former ruling system and its affiliated information-expert circles, underlying the traditional agenda of distrust toward the new government and revolution. Perhaps against the background of these two tributaries of information, it’s also interesting to note the NSS's statement regarding the disclosure of espionage activities, including considering a characterization that various public circles give to several aspects of the former ruling system's operations, associating its nature not with public and state interests, but rather with Azerbaijani interests.”

Details are available in today’s issue of the newspaper.