Russian Intelligence accuses EU of “malicious attack” on ROC in Armenia

The Chapel Church of Archangel Michael in Gyumri. Photo: screenshot from Sergei Evstifeev’s YouTube channel

On June 3, 2026, the Press Bureau of Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) stated that the EU leadership had moved to aggressive action aimed at pushing the Russian Orthodox Church out of Armenia. According to the agency, Western officials demanded that Armenian authorities completely sever religious and spiritual ties with Russia as a mandatory condition for joining the EU.

The intelligence service claimed that the EU Partnership Mission in Armenia, established in April, had launched a “malicious attack” on canonical Orthodoxy. EU representatives are allegedly trying to deprive the ROC’s Yerevan-Armenian Eparchy of the right to use church property and to block its dialogue with local religious structures, above all the Armenian Apostolic Church.

One stage of this campaign, according to the SVR, was an attack on Priest Timofey Kazaryan, rector of the Chapel Church of Archangel Michael at Russia’s 102nd military base in Gyumri. The NGOs Union of Informed Citizens and the Vanadzor Office of the Helsinki Citizens’ Assembly, which the Russian agency described as controlled by Brussels, accused the priest of interfering in the upcoming parliamentary elections.

According to the SVR, European partners are now fabricating compromising materials against other clergy of the eparchy in order to pressure Armenian authorities into launching a large-scale persecution of the Church. The SVR stressed that spiritual and religious ties run deeper than any political technology projects.

As previously reported by the UOJ, Pashinyan signed a “roadmap for renewing the Armenian Church.”

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