Operation “Beard” Russian spy network in Yerevan: names and positions

On May 19, the investigative outlet The Insider, which specialises in investigative journalism, fact-checking and political analysis, published a sensational investigation by journalist Sergey Kanev. It reveals, with an unprecedented level of detail, how the Kremlin is preparing for the parliamentary elections in Armenia on June 7. Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, whose posters are now displayed across Armenia, is referred to in Russian foreign intelligence documents under the operational pseudonym “Beard.”

The narrative begins at Staraya Square, where the administration of the President of the Russian Federation is located — a complex of buildings that, during the Soviet era, housed the Central Committee of the CPSU.

The former Presidential Directorate for Cultural Cooperation, headed by Dmitry Kozak, who was removed from office after the failure of the Moldovan campaign, has been dissolved. In its place, a new Directorate for Strategic Partnership and Cooperation has been created, led by Vadim Titov, a protégé of First Deputy Chief of Staff Sergei Kiriyenko and a former nuclear industry executive from Rosatom. The Kremlin has acknowledged that previous methods no longer work, and therefore has appointed a figure from Rosatom whose debut visit to Budapest ahead of the recent elections ended in the same way as Kozak’s earlier trips.

The Armenian track within the new directorate is handled by two officials: Valery Chernyshov, head of the department for the development of interregional and socio-cultural relations, and his deputy Dmitry Avanesov.

Avanesov (left) and Chernyshov (far right)

The investigation states directly about them: both are representatives of the security services. After serving at a Russian military base in Abkhazia, Chernyshov underwent retraining with the GRU and taught the basics of sabotage operations at courses in Zagoryansky near Moscow. Avanesov is a career missile forces officer who graduated from the Peter the Great Military Academy; in 2012, he completed an FSB programme titled “Systems for Assessing, Analysing and Forecasting the State of National Security.”

Within the government, the Armenian track is overseen by Deputy Prime Minister Alexei Overchuk, who, as Kanev notes, warns Yerevan almost weekly of looming economic difficulties should it drift towards the EU and the United States.

On the Foreign Ministry side, elections are handled by the head of the Fourth Department for CIS Countries, Mikhail Kalugin — a figure whose biography on its own reads like a separate chapter of the Russian espionage genre.

Mikhail Kalugin

He began his diplomatic career as a press attaché in Lithuania, in a mission headed by former deputy director of the Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) Yury Zubakov. In 2006, Lithuanian security services suspected the attaché of working for Russian intelligence, and he was recalled to Moscow.

In 2016, he was already serving as an economic adviser in Washington, where his name appeared in materials concerning interference in the U.S. elections. After these publications, Kalugin returned home again. He was appointed head of a department in the Foreign Ministry’s Directorate for Foreign Policy Planning, and in July last year, he became head of the Fourth CIS Department, from where he now oversees the Yerevan direction.

Around this core, there is a layer of think tanks and senators. These include the Gorchakov Fund, the National Research Institute for the Development of Communications under the leadership of SVR officer Vladislav Gasumyanov, and the Russian Institute for Strategic Studies under the same SVR, along with a whole array of pseudo-expert organisations funded from Staraya Square.

Public-facing roles are played by Senator Konstantin Kosachev and State Duma deputy Konstantin Zatulin; the latter also heads the Lazarev Club, whose board, as The Insider reminds, includes billionaire Samvel Karapetyan — a figure to whom the investigation returns separately.

Rossotrudnichestvo, long the main channel of Russian soft power abroad, has recently been headed by Igor Chaika, the son of the former Prosecutor General.

Igor Chaika

His predecessor, Yevgeny Primakov Jr., known by the nickname “Sandro,” publicly opposed so-called “balalaika diplomacy” and urged the Kremlin to scale back empty overseas events. The Kremlin responded in its own way: Sandro was removed, and his place was taken by a figure who, according to Kanev’s description, was involved in financing pro-Kremlin opposition in Moldova and who, in 2022, was sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury Department and later by the EU.

The Russian House in Yerevan is headed by former NTV war correspondent Vadim Fefilov. According to the investigation, its main work focuses on Armenian youth, consistently promoting the message that Armenia has no future without Russia.

Vadim Fefilov

The main “hero” of the Russian intelligence network in Armenia is the trade representative of the embassy, Alexei Myshlyavkin. On June 3, four days before the elections, Myshlyavkin will celebrate his 60th birthday; colleagues will be congratulating the SVR resident in Armenia, who, after graduating from the Academy of Foreign Intelligence, served in Yasenevo in a unit preparing illegal operatives for Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia.

His family lived in the so-called “spy house” on Vilnius Street, built at the request of the SVR; in 2017, they moved to Kommunarka, near the intelligence headquarters, and in November 2020, Myshlyavkin took over the Yerevan residency. Since then, according to The Insider, he has used his network of agents to monitor every move of “Beard.”

Alongside him is deputy Sergei Katin, a former communications officer of the Federal Agency for Government Communications, who graduated from the SVR Academy and is officially listed as serving in military unit 33949. A noteworthy, though not central, detail of the investigation is that Katin’s new wife, Yevgenia, heads the financial division of the American company ChampionX, which in 2024 was acquired for $7.76 billion by SLB—formerly Schlumberger—which continues to operate in Russia and bypass sanctions via China and India.

Sergei Katin

The third figure in this Yerevan circle is Vyacheslav Proshkin — formally a Rosatom representative at the Metsamor Nuclear Power Plant, but in reality a career GRU officer who passed through the controversial Defence Ministry Special Programmes Financing Centre.

To this group can be added three FSB officers — embassy adviser General Sergei Kivachuk, First Secretary Vitaly Kucheruk, and attaché Alexander Gladyshchuk. Kivachuk, who had never previously worked abroad, was transferred to Yerevan after serving in Udmurtia and the Republic of Mari El; in Yerevan, according to Kanev’s description, he keeps operational records of Russian expatriates, many of whom have become public critics of the war.

Kucheruk, a former officer of the FSB Military Counterintelligence Directorate of the Baltic Fleet, according to a source cited by The Insider, was part of a group that conducted operational profiling of Kristinne Grigoryan, the head of Armenia’s Foreign Intelligence Service established by Pashinyan in 2023. Moscow, the source claims, unsuccessfully offered her a short-term internship at the SVR Academy.

Gladyshchuk, who before his assignment in Yerevan was compiling detailed maps of NATO facilities in Belgium, is now engaged in the same line of work on Armenian territory.

Kucheruk and Kivachuk 

The most high-profile part of the investigation is devoted to two candidates for prime minister.

Samvel Karapetyan, owner of the construction giant Tashir, a major contractor for Gazprom, and majority shareholder (71.29%) of Fora Bank, which has been under U.S. Treasury sanctions since November 2024, has created the “Strong Armenia” bloc, presented by Moscow as the main counterweight to the Civil Contract party.

He is currently under arrest — on charges of public calls to seize power and money laundering — but, as Kanev writes, it was him that Putin referred to in an April conversation with Pashinyan when stating that pro-Russian forces should be allowed to participate in elections. Pashinyan reportedly reminded him that Armenia’s constitution does not allow foreign citizens to take part in parliamentary elections, and even less to appoint someone with a foreign passport as prime minister.

The investigation, citing leaked Interior Ministry databases, claims that in Karapetyan’s passport file issued in Kaluga in 1999, the “place of work” field contains a note reading “IC FSB.” According to an operational officer interviewed by the editorial team, such a marking is typically used for foreigners working under FSB control or for covert informants.

The sign itself means that any background check on such a citizen begins with a phone call to the security services. A source familiar with the billionaire’s close circle told The Insider that Karapetyan had never been involved in politics, but the Kremlin pressed him and forced him to assemble a bloc against Pashinyan.

The second candidate, the leader of the Prosperous Armenia party, Gagik Tsarukyan, has an even more striking biography. In 1979, while still a police officer, he was convicted of robbery and the gang rape of two female tourists from the Russian SFSR and served his sentence in the “Krasnaya Utka” penal colony near Nizhny Tagil. After the collapse of the USSR, when Tsarukyan had already entered the top 100 richest people in Armenia, the court acquitted him.

In November 2004, a car belonging to the editor-in-chief of the opposition newspaper Armenian Times — the same Nikol Pashinyan — was blown up in central Yerevan. Pashinyan attributed the attack to Tsarukyan, who was allegedly angered by one of his articles; the criminal case remains unsolved.

In February 2019, Tsarukyan’s party signed a cooperation protocol with United Russia. Leaks from the now-dissolved Presidential Administration Directorate for Cultural Cooperation, Kanev notes, include a copy of Tsarukyan’s passport and a financial estimate of his 2017 election campaign, reportedly paid for from a special Staraya Square fund.

A man accused by Pashinyan of attempting to eliminate him is now running against him in the elections under Kremlin patronage.

The details of Kanev’s investigation are indeed striking — every name comes with a biography, rank, operational alias, military unit, and even photographs. But the most revealing aspect of the material is its personnel layer.

The Kremlin has not found new faces. It is rotating the same Zatulin, Chaika, and Kalugin figures. A billionaire Karapetyan is assigned to the financial bloc. A party leader with a rape conviction is used as part of the public-facing “mass”. The intelligence agent is a 65-year-old officer trained in Yasenevo specifically for operations targeting the South Caucasus.

The templates were designed in the 1990s; they are now being confronted by Armenia’s Civil Contract and its Foreign Intelligence Service, established in 2023.

The June 7 elections are the last major test of Russia’s “electoral diplomacy” outside Belarus. Moldova has held its ground. Armenia is entering June with an active counterintelligence service. Will “The Beard” withstand it? We will find out very soon…