The State Security Service will be separated from the National Security Service (NSS) agencies and become a separate agency under the Prime Minister of Armenia. Security Council secretary Armen Grigoryan announced this at Thursday’s Cabinet meeting of the Armenian government.

"This reform is within the framework of reforms in the general security sector. One of the important points is that previously, a retired president was given life-long state protection. Now this service will be provided for another seven years after retiring [from office]; in the case of the prime minister, it will be [for] ten years," he said.

PM Nikol Pashinyan, in turn added that, if necessary, the state security service for the top officials of Armenia can be extended once they leave office.

Referring to the fact that the NSS will be coming under the authority of the prime minister, Pashinyan evaluated it positively, noting that this will give the NSS an opportunity to focus on its main functions—the first of which is counterintelligence, he said.

"I wanted to say happily. But not so much happily, it needs to be said that in terms of counterintelligence, the NSS has had unprecedented success in recent times," the PM stated.

He added that the Armenian public is being informed about the respective findings, and considered it very unfortunate that such phenomena exist.