Politik.am: How Mikayel Minasyan Freed His Friend, U.S. Agent Arman Babajanyan, from Prison

27.08.2025, Politik.am reports:

“In 2019, Ankakh Daily reported that Armenian MP Arman Babajanyan had cooperated with U.S. special services and worked for a company supplying information to U.S. intelligence. The newspaper based this claim on data from WikiLeaks, which was publicly available in 2012.

In 2019, many accused Nikol Pashinyan’s government of failing to prosecute him or hold him accountable. But how could Pashinyan prosecute a man who was, in effect, repeating his own biography?

It is interesting that people overlook the dates and fail to notice that information about Arman Babajanyan being an agent has been available online since 2012. Therefore, the first question should be addressed to Serzh Sargsyan: how is it that you not only released this U.S. agent on parole in 2009 (where he had been sent by Robert Kocharyan for evading compulsory military service), but also funded and established for him the news agency 1in.am, which has since grown into a major source of Russophobia?

It should be noted that Arman Babajanyan gained not only freedom but also significant opportunities to launch his activities, as he was not only a U.S. agent but also a close friend of Serzh Sargsyan’s son-in-law, Mikayel Minasyan. Babajanyan and Minasyan were schoolmates at the spiritual academy on San Lazzaro Island in Venice in 1993–1995. They were not just classmates but also like-minded companions.

This is why, after the change of power in the country, Arman Babajanyan publicly declared that Mikayel Minasyan was one of the best ambassadors in Armenia’s history and expressed regret over his resignation.

All this demonstrates that Arman Babajanyan’s activities should not be viewed solely in the context of the incumbent authorities. His trajectory shows that governments of different periods, whether deliberately or unintentionally, contributed to his advancement.”