"What is permitted to Jupiter is not permitted to a bull": Why are  some people allowed to cooperate with security services, while others  are not?

ArmInfo. Speaker of the Armenian Parliament Alen Simonyan believes it is inappropriate to draw comparisons between Ararat Mirzoyan's (Foreign Minister - ed.) collaboration with state security agencies during his time as an  opposition leader and  Archbishop Yezras's collaboration (head of the  Russian and New Nakhichevan Diocese of the Armenian Apostolic Church,  brother of Catholicos Karekin II - ed.).

Simonyan  made these remarks at a parliamentary briefing on March 24, in response to a question about why the authorities accuse the archbishop of collaborating with the Soviet KGB, while Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan himself has admitted to collaborating with the Armenian National Security  Service.

 "For example, if the National Security Service (NSS) summoned any of  you now and asked you to report a soldier crossing the border, that's  one thing. Pledge allegiance to the USSR's special services, or to  another country's, is quite another matter. If I believe the NSS  should know something, I personally call the NSS chief," Simonyan  stated.

In January 2021, Mikael Minasyan, former ambassador to the Vatican  and son-in-law of former President Serzh Sargsyan, claimed in a  Facebook video that Ararat Mirzoyan had been a Turkish agent since  2005 and had been selling Armenia's secrets to Turkey for many years.  According to him, when the Armenian NSS discovered Mirzoyan's  connection to Turkey, it forced him to become a "double agent."  Minasyan also published a document, claiming that Ararat Mirzoyan had  handwritten it confirming his cooperation with the NSS. "This latest  nonsense by M. Minasyan must receive a corresponding criminal  assessment, and Minasyan must also be held accountable for this false  denunciation," Mirzoyan wrote on his Facebook page at the time. In  turn, the National Security Service, stated that the information  published by Minasyan about Armenian Parliament Speaker Ararat  Mirzoyan being an intelligence agent, as well as the information he  disseminated regarding other documents, were deliberately false and  had nothing to do with reality.

Nevertheless, on March 23, 2026, Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan  confirmed his cooperation with the Armenian intelligence services. He  noted that much time had passed since this information was  disseminated, but there had been no opportunity to address the issue.  "I would like to say that the National Security Service of Armenia  approached me, as a graduate student at the Armenian Genocide  Institute and a researcher, an employee of the National Archives'  Department of Public and Political Documents, and a historian who  writes various articles, including for foreign publications, in the  lead-up to the 100th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide, and asked  me to assist them with this agenda," the Foreign Minister said.  According to him, the issue at hand was the security of the Republic  of Armenia and support for a state institution, not the ruling  regime. This cooperation was short-lived, and the diplomat himself  never hid this fact. Explaining the difference between the status of  an expert and an agent, the minister emphasized that an agent is a  recruited individual who unquestioningly carries out various  instructions from their handlers. Mirzoyan called it completely  inappropriate to draw parallels between a citizen who, in a difficult  situation, tried to be useful to the national security of his  independent country and a person who was an agent of the intelligence  services of an entire empire. 

It should also be noted that at the end of 2025, the pro-government  website civic.am published a document (in Armenian) allegedly proving  that the current primate of the Russian and New Nakhichevan Diocese  of the Armenian Apostolic Church, Archbishop Yezras Nersisyan  (brother of Catholicos of All Armenians Karekin II), was allegedly  recruited by the Soviet KGB in the 1980s under the alias "Karon." The  archbishop categorically denied these accusations, calling the  documents a forgery. The document was leaked online after Prime  Minister Nikol Pashinyan repeatedly accused Archbishop Yezras of  being a "KGB agent."