Armenia’s top spy warns of growing hybrid threats in run-up to elections

Hybrid threats facing Armenia continue and are intensifying, and in the run-up to the upcoming parliamentary elections, the hybrid toolkit is expected to be even more effective, Head of the Foreign Intelligence Service of Armenia Kristinne Grigoryan has warned.

“Hybrid threats continue and are intensifying. We must come to terms with the sad reality that hybrid threats will accompany us, much like pandemics. Just as societies learn to live under pandemic conditions—by getting vaccinated, taking preventive measures, and strengthening the immune system—similarly, societies, especially democratic ones, must follow this path to confront hybrid threats,” Grigoryan said at the AIISA Security Forum, titled Armenia and Peace: At the Intersection of Risks and Opportunities.

She noted that elections will be used as predictable democratic processes, within whose rules the hybrid toolkit will achieve greater effectiveness by those utilizing it.

According to Grigoryan, the hybrid toolkit cannot be objectively limited only to representatives of the state security sector.

Hybrid threats require awareness, action, evaluation, and engagement from all members of society. “The logic of electoral processes should be mapped out spatially to identify where certain types of interventions will be most active or effective. In our assessment, this involves targeting the political participation component of elections, which makes these actions—alongside cyber operations that may target critical infrastructure or the logic and infrastructure of democratic electoral processes—very logical. These could also include economic actions, potentially combined with those economic measures, to provoke or guide the choices of voters in the business sector or influence their decisions,” Grigoryan explained.

She also noted that youth ignorance and patriotic feelings are often exploited in political processes. “This year in Armenia, we have particularly observed the targeting of youth—not only in the context of the upcoming elections but over a much longer-term perspective,” Grigoryan said.