The Armenian government gave no reason for the sacking announced in the morning. Pashinian likewise declined to clearly explain it when he spoke to journalists afterwards.
“I think he deserves to rest a bit,” he said. “He has worked [as NSS director] in tense conditions for five years. I think you understand that it hasn’t been easy.”
Pashinian did not deny a connection between Abazian’s sacking and a crackdown on billionaire Samvel Karapetian which he personally ordered on Tuesday right after the latter strongly condemned his campaign against the Armenian Apostolic Church.
Masked NSS officers surrounded Karapetian’s mansion in Yerevan in apparent preparation for his arrest. But as hundreds of his angry supporters rallied outside the house, they did not raid it and left the scene in the evening. The tycoon emerged from his residence and was escorted to police custody instead several hours later.
Citing unnamed sources, the Hraparak daily claimed that Pashinian fired Abazian because of the NSS’s failure to demonstratively arrest Karapetian in front of his supporters and the press. Tigran Abrahamian, an opposition lawmaker, suggested that this was probably one of the reasons for the sacking.
“Maybe it has to do with the fact that [Abazian] too has some red lines that he didn’t want to cross,” Abrahamian told reporters. He said other factors may have also been at play.
Abazian is the fifth head of the NSS to have served during Pashinian’s seven-year rule. He was appointed on November 8, 2020 one day before a Russian-brokered ceasefire agreement that stopped the Armenian-Azerbaijani war in Nagorno-Karabakh.