General Who Helped Build Armenia’s Army Gives Up Citizenship, Vows Never to Return

Lieutenant General Norat Ter-Grigoryants, one of the military commanders who helped build Armenia’s armed forces after independence, says he has given up his Armenian passport and will never return to the country, citing deep opposition to the government in Yerevan.

Ter-Grigoryants, who lives in Russia, told Armenian newspaper Iravunk that he personally surrendered his passport at an Armenian consulate.

“I went to the consulate and returned my Armenian passport,” he said. “They looked at me in surprise and asked, ‘Mr. Ter-Grigoryants, what are you doing?’”

Ter-Grigoryants said he told consular officials that Armenia was now governed by people who had “betrayed” the Armenian people and, in his words, wanted to destroy them “with the help of the Turks.”

He said he later received a notice from Armenia’s presidential administration informing him that he had been deprived of Armenian citizenship.

“Well, goodbye, my dear ones. I will never come to Armenia again. That’s it,” Ter-Grigoryants said.

His decision carries particular weight because of his role in the creation of Armenia’s military during the first years after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Ter-Grigoryants served as chief of the General Staff and first deputy defense minister in 1992, when Armenia was building a regular army while fighting was underway in and around Nagorno-Karabakh. He briefly served as acting defense minister in 1993.

A Soviet-trained career officer, Ter-Grigoryants was involved in turning Armenia’s volunteer fighting units into a more centralized military force, helping establish a formal command structure for the newly independent country.

Between 1992 and 1995, he also took part in planning the defense of Armenia’s borders and Armenian military operations during the First Nagorno-Karabakh War. His work included developing mountain warfare tactics used by Armenian forces and assisting in the formation of units that became part of the Nagorno-Karabakh Defense Army.

More than three decades later, the retired general who helped establish Armenia’s post-Soviet military says he has severed his formal ties with the country whose armed forces he helped build.

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