Law-enforcement authorities have so far given few details of criminal proceedings that led to the arrests made in southeastern Syunik province on Wednesday and Thursday. According to them, the National Security Service (NSS) launched the investigation on August 24.
Another law-enforcement agency, the Investigative Committee, said on Friday that two of the suspects were detained while trafficking an assault rifle, multiple pistols, hand grenades and ammunition provided by an unnamed resident of a Syunik village close to the Azerbaijani border. A committee spokesman refused to elaborate.
A lawyer representing Sputnik journalist Ashot Gevorgian and blogger Mika Badalian told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service that the weapons were found in Gevorgian’s car. Liana Grigorian insisted, however, that the two men “have nothing to do” with them and that the arrests were the result of a “misunderstanding.”
The lawyer also said that Gevorgian and Badalian, who is an outspoken critic of the Armenian government, travelled to Syunik on assignment on Wednesday and were taken into custody hours later.
None of the seven suspects was formally charged as of Friday afternoon. Under Armenian law, the investigators must indict or free them within 72 hours after their detention.
The Russian Embassy in Yerevan expressed concern at the arrests of Gevorgian and Badalian. “We will take steps to clarify the circumstances of what happened,” it said in a statement.
The Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, Maria Zakharova, was also concerned, saying that the arrests may be a “provocation by those who go out of their way to ruin relations between the two countries.”
“The West has invested a lot of money in that,” Zakharova wrote on Telegram late on Thursday. “Forces seeking that have clearly become more active lately.”
The Russian-Armenian relationship has steadily deteriorated since the 2020 war in Nagorno-Karabakh. Tensions between the two allied states rose this week after Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian called Armenia’s reliance on Russia for defense a “strategic mistake” and his government decided to host a U.S.-Armenian military exercise.