Armenia Pays U.S. Public Relations Firm To Attack the Armenian Apostolic Church — By Harut Sassounian
Last week, I came across a disturbing 8-page document described as a “White Paper” titled “Clarifying Church-State Relations in Armenia: A Rebuttal to the Narrative of Religious Persecution under Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan.” It is dated Sept. 5, 2025.
This is a blatant attempt by the Pashinyan regime to whitewash its shameful attacks on the Armenian Apostolic Church, making unfounded allegations about Church leaders and the political opposition.
Strangely, this document, prepared at the request of the Prime Minister, is posted only on the website of “Save the Persecuted Christians,” an organization based in Washington, D.C. It is not even posted on the Prime Minister’s website. Most probably, the public relations firm Mercury Public Affairs, hired in April by the Armenian government, prepared the White Paper.
This propaganda document makes a number of baseless statements against the Armenian Apostolic Church and the political opposition. For example, it claims that those opposed to Pashinyan are accusing him of making “a deliberate effort to ‘Islamize’ Armenia by bringing in 300,000 Muslim Azeris.” No source is provided for this claim. Even if someone had made such an allegation, the White Paper generalizes it to the entire opposition. Nevertheless, it is a fact that Pashinyan has made endless concessions to Pres. Aliyev, including handing over Artsakh to Azerbaijan, ceding parts of the territory of the Republic of Armenia, changing the constitution, agreeing to disband the Minsk Group of mediators, and reducing the defense budget.
The White Paper further asserts that “the use of incendiary language and misinformation undermines democratic discourse and distracts from Armenia’s urgent security and governance challenges.” This is precisely what Pashinyan and his partner, Anna Hakobyan, have been doing for months through embarrassing posts on their Facebook pages. Furthermore, the White Paper accuses businessman Samvel Karapetyan of having “direct ties with the Kremlin,” thus appearing to excuse his arrest and justify the confiscation of his multi-million-dollar business interests in Armenia. Karapetyan had simply expressed his support for the Catholicos. Armenia’s Prime Minister does not respect freedom of expression, which is the bedrock of any democratic society.
In another objectionable statement, the White Paper criticizes the Catholicos for publicly calling for Pashinyan’s resignation, adding: “Yet, no law-enforcement measures have been taken in response to these statements.” Is expressing one’s opinion a crime?
More importantly, the White Paper misrepresents Armenia’s constitution by stating that “Pashinyan’s government has promoted a policy agenda that emphasizes civilian supremacy over clerical institutions, in line with constitutional principles of secular governance.” On the contrary, the constitution provides for separation of Church and State, which bars the government from meddling in internal Church affairs. Those who say that the Church is meddling in politics are mistaken. Clergymen have the same rights as every other citizen — to vote and run for office. Furthermore, any Armenian, including clergymen, who sees that political leaders are leading the country to destruction, has a patriotic duty to speak up to save the country.
Pashinyan ordered the arrests of three high-ranking clergymen under the pretext that they were engaged in illegal acts He sent police onto the grounds of Holy Etchmiadzin, posted pornographic words referring to his sexual organ on his Facebook page, confessed that he was married neither by the Church nor by secular authorities, urged his followers to “converge” on Etchmiadzin and “liberate” the Catholicosate, and attended Mass celebrated by defrocked “priests” who are desecrating the Church. That alone is sufficient reason to excommunicate Pashinyan from the Armenian Apostolic Church.
Meanwhile, Pashinyan’s partner, Anna Hakobyan, on her Facebook page described high-ranking Armenian clergymen as “the country’s chief pedophiles” and “black-vested maniac perverts.” This is a wholly inappropriate way of addressing the clergy, particularly without presenting any evidence for such claims. She would have been sued for libel if Armenia’s judges were not under Pashinyan’s thumb.
The White Paper desperately tries to argue that Pashinyan is against the Catholicos but not against the Armenian Church by claiming that the public trust in the Church is “high, around 60%, whereas confidence in its top leadership drops sharply.” While the approximate 60% figure is accurate, the White Paper presents no evidence that public confidence in Church leadership is low. The White Paper does not mention that Pashinyan’s approval rating plummeted from a high of 82% when he came to power in 2018 to a little over 10% now.
The most troubling aspect of the White Paper is that it was probably prepared by Mercury Public Affairs, a Washington PR firm hired by Pashinyan’s government for $600,000 a year to promote Armenia’s interests in the U.S. Congress and the Administration and to counter the lobbying and PR firms retained by Azerbaijan and Turkey. I infer Mercury’s involvement because the signed contract mentions that it was hired to “provide strategic communications and media relations services to Client [Republic of Armenia].”
However, rather than targeting Azerbaijan and Turkey or defending Armenia’s interests in Washington, Pashinyan has decided to use the expensive services of the PR firm to attack the Armenian Apostolic Church and its leadership.
