Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan has appointed former Parliamentary Speaker Alen Simonyan to the post of Secretary of the Security Council, replacing Armen Grigoryan, according to decrees published on the government’s website on Thursday.

Grigoryan, who had served as Security Council Secretary since May 2018, said goodbye to his colleagues at a cabinet meeting.

He was one of the longest-serving officials in Pashinyan’s government. During his tenure as Security Council Secretary, he helped to establish Armenia’s Foreign Intelligence Service in 2023. He became one of Pashinyan’s closest advisers on security and foreign policy in the aftermath of the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh war.

Throughout his eight years as Security Council Secretary, he also served as one of Armenia’s key negotiators and public voices on normalisation with Azerbaijan. Grigoryan took part in US-brokered negotiations between Armenia and Azerbaijan and called for institutionalising the peace between the two countries.

Speaking at the post-meeting briefing, Pashinyan said he had offered Grigoryan a position on his staff, but Grigoryan chose to step back and rest instead.

‘It’s not that I’ve been dissatisfied with Armen Grigoryan’s work, but I am also not so satisfied with my own work that I consider it perfect’, said Pashinyan.

Simonyan’s appointment follows his departure from parliament earlier this year. At the end of June, the ruling Civil Contract party voted anonymously to back Deputy Speaker Ruben Rubinyan as its candidate for new parliamentary speaker, passing over both Simonyan and Deputy Speaker Hayk Konjoryan. Parliament later elected Rubinyan as its new speaker.

After losing his party’s backing, Simonyan, who held the parliamentary speaker’s role for five years and played a prominent part in the election campaign, announced that he would not be taking up his parliamentary mandate. He said he would prefer to remain speaker but respects the party’s decision, adding that this would give him a chance to rest and focus on his personal life.

Azerbaijan could begin supplying Armenia with electricity, President Ilham Aliyev said on Tuesday. Aliyev argued Armenia cannot indefinitely extend the operation of the Soviet-era Metsamor Nuclear Power Plant (NPP), and could be at risk of an electricity deficit should the plant stop running. The possible move was the latest sign of a growing rapprochement between the two countries after decades of conflict.

In an interview, Aliyev said Azerbaijani specialists have conducted preliminary surveys in Armenia and identified possible sites for power-line pylons.

‘I hope the Armenian side will not delay a decision on this matter. After all, they themselves may need it most of all, given that their primary energy source today is a nuclear power plant — one that is not under their own control’, Aliyev said.

He said the project to build a power line to transmit electricity from Azerbaijan through Armenia to Nakhchivan is ready and would take six months at most to complete.

The current operational lifecycle of the Metsamor NPP in Armenia is set to end in 2036, and the country has announced plans to replace it with a modular one. In February, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan stated that the operation of the facility could be extended until 2046.

Aliyev also said that Azerbaijan and Turkey repeatedly ‘expressed concern’ about the Metasmor NPP’s danger to the region ‘at various international forums’, having said in 2023 that the facility ‘uses outdated technology and suffers from serious technical issues’.

On Wednesday, Sargis Khandanyan, an MP from the ruling Civil Contract party, did not exclude the possibility of Armenia buying electricity from Azerbaijan in a conversation with RFE/RL. Khandanyan said that, once the two countries’ power grids are connected, there could be exchange arrangements, but it is too early to discuss the details.

In a press briefing on Thursday, Pashinyan commented on Aliyev’s statement, saying that Armenia used to have an electricity surplus, but now the country might develop new demands.

‘In terms of building new AI factories in Armenia, we are forced to think that we need to reconsider our energy strategies to have the capabilities to meet these new conditions and expectations.’

Earlier in January, Pashinyan announced in parliament that Armenia and Azerbaijan will eventually have a joint power grid.

In response to Aliyev’s statements, Narek Karapetyan, the leader of the opposition party Strong Armenia, ruled out concerns about a possible energy crisis in Armenia and said that Armenia can build another nuclear power plant.

Aliyev’s announcements about a working group having visited Armenia were unknown to the Armenian public. While MP Khandanyan said he was not aware of the details of the Azerbaijani specialists’ visit, Karapetyan had mentioned that they knew about the visit to Meghri province in recent months through informal channels rather than official notice.

Up until June, Narek Karapetyan’s uncle, businessperson Samvel Karapetyan, owned the Electric Networks of Armenia (ENA), the main energy provider in Armenia. Pashinyan said the company would be nationalised.

‘It will become state property and be transferred to trust management’, said Pashinyan on 7 August during a government session.

The process of nationalising ENA began when the Russian–Armenian tycoon Samvel Karapetyan was arrested and held in pre-trial detention for more than six months, after which he was placed under house arrest. In June 2025, he was charged with attempting to seize power following a pro-Church statement he made amid tensions between the Armenian government and the Armenian Apostolic Church.