“Obviously, this is an internal affair of our neighbors, but, of course, attacks on the canonical, thousand-year-old Armenian Apostolic Church are of grave concern,” said Lavrov. “The church has traditionally always been one of the key pillars of Armenian society, and we would very much not like this church to be subjected to unjustified attacks essentially without any serious grounds.
“And we feel that within the Armenian society a movement in support of the church is very, very serious. It is based on profound traditions which Orthodoxy has in Armenia,” he said, calling for a solution “based on full respect for the rights of believers.”
Armenia - Armenian Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan meets his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov, Yerevan, May21, 2025.
Mirzoyan was quick to reject the criticism. He insisted that Armenian authorities are cracking down not on the church as a whole but on “a few clerics” who plotted a coup or engaged in other illegal political activities.
“This is a legal process, and this is an internal affair of Armenia,” Mirzoyan told a joint news conference with the European Union’s visiting foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas. “Mr. Lavrov had better not interfere in the internal affairs and internal politics of Armenia.”
Lavrov clearly referred to last week’s arrests of two Armenian archbishops which came amid Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian’s efforts to depose Catholicos Garegin II, the church’s supreme head highly critical of his domestic and foreign policies. Archbishop Bagrat Galstanian and 14 of his supporters were charged on June 25 with plotting to topple Pashinian through “terrorist acts.”
Armenia - Archbishop Mikael Ajapahian (second from left) leaves the Echmiadzin headquarters of the Armenian Apostolic Church for a law-enforcement agency in Yerevan, June 27, 2025.
Two days later, security forces raided the church headquarters in Echmiadzin in a bid to arrest another archbishop, Mikael Ajapahian. But they failed to do that after meeting with fierce resistance from hundreds of angry priests and laymen. Ajapahian surrendered to a law-enforcement agency several hours after the unprecedented raid condemned by the Armenian opposition and many public figures.
Ajapahian was charged with calling for a violent regime change. Both he and Galstanian have described the separate criminal cases as politically motivated.
Pashinian launched his campaign against the top clergy a month ago. On June 26, he threatened to forcibly remove Garegin from Echmiadzin if the Catholicos continues to ignore his demands to resign.
Samvel Karapetian, an Armenian-born billionaire based in Moscow, visited Echmiadzin and condemned the campaign on June 17 hours before being arrested and charged with calling for a violent overthrow of Pashinian. Several Russian lawmakers openly deplored Karapetian’s arrest, leading Yerevan to send a protest note to Moscow.
The controversial arrests appear to be reigning Russian-Armenian tensions which the two sides eased earlier this year. Lavrov underscored that thaw in bilateral relations when he visited Yerevan on May 21.