Vigen Sargsyan

Vigen Sargsyan (Armenian: Վիգեն Ալեքսանդրի Սարգսյան; born 10 May 1975) is an Armenian politician who served as the Defence Minister of Armenia from October 2016 until May 2018 and as the Chief of Presidential Administration from October 2011 to October 2016.

He is not related to either the former President of Armenia Serzh Sargsyan or the former Prime Minister Tigran Sargsyan.

He left the office after the Velvet Revolution led by opposition politician Nikol Pashinyan, who became Armenia's new prime minister.

Vigen Sargsyan was born on 10 May 1975 in Yerevan into a family of medics.

From 1995 to 1998, he served as an assistant and adviser to speakers of the National Assembly Babken Ararktsyan and Khosrov Harutyunyan.

During the same period, he served as Executive Secretary of the national delegations to the Inter-Parliamentary Union, the Parliamentary Assembly of OSCE, and the CIS Inter-Parliamentary Assembly.

He graduated from the North-West Academy of Public Administration in Saint Petersburg in 1996, then graduated from Yerevan State University's Department of International Relations in 1999, earning a master's degree in "History of Diplomacy and International Relations".

In 2000, he graduated from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts and Harvard Universities with a master's degree in law and diplomacy.

Sargsyan holds an Executive MBA from Massachusetts Institute of Technology and is an Honorary Professor of the North-West Academy of Public Administration.

After returning from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Sargsyan served in the Armenian Armed Forces from 2000 to 2003 as assistant to the Minister of Defence, then Serzh Sargsyan.

He was an adjunct lecturer at the American University of Armenia from 2001 to 2011, teaching graduate course in the field of International Public Law, International Human Rights and International Relations.

After finishing military service in 2003, Sargsyan served as an Assistant to the President of Armenia Robert Kocharyan, with portfolio in foreign and national security policy, as well as diaspora affairs.

Since 2003, as Assistant to the President of Armenia, and later as Deputy Chief and Chief of Staff, he curated the work of Armenian diplomatic missions abroad.

For over 15 years he has been in the narrow circle of Armenian politicians, directly participating in Nagorno Karabakh peace talks.

Vigen Sargsyan has regularly expressed his confidence that the conflict shall be resolved based on compromises, but only when the right of people of Artsakh for self-determination is acknowledged and its execution is internationally guaranteed.

As Assistant to the President of Armenia, Vigen Sargsyan actively participated in the development of the first National Security Strategy and Military Doctrine of the Republic of Armenia, which were adopted in 2007 and stayed intact until they were revisited in 2018, after the change of government in Armenia.

When Serzh Sargsyan was sworn in as President in April 2008, Vigen Sargsyan was offered to stay and continued public service.

He was part of President Sargsyan’s team, when they launched the Armenia-Turkey dialogue in 2008, which became known as “football diplomacy”, as the two major summits occurred on the occasion of football games of national teams of Armenia and Turkey in Yerevan (Armenia) and Bursa (Turkey).

The process culminated in signing of the Protocols in Geneva, Switzerland.

Later, Turkey refused to ratify those documents.

As part of the initiative, President Sargsyan’s administration initiated and implemented the “Pan-Armenian Tour”, through which President visited all major Armenian Diaspora centers and held town-hall meetings with representatives of the Armenian communities, facing their severe criticism for the attempts of rapprochement with Turkey.

After leaving public office, Sargsyan assumed the role of Executive Director of Luys Foundation, created in 2009, and turned it into a public policy think-tank.

On 27 January 2009 the then-President Serzh Sargsyan promoted him to the position of Deputy Chief of Staff.

Two years later, in October 2011, Sargsyan became Chief of Staff to the President of the Republic, the highest political appointee position in the country, which he held through 2016.

On 3 October 2016 Sargsyan was appointed Minister of Defence by President Serzh Sargsyan, succeeding Seyran Ohanyan.

Sargsyan announced that his efforts as Defence Minister would be aimed at building the "nation-army" concept, which he described as the idea of assuring full democratic control over military in a country, where the Armed Forces are unproportionally big compared to the size of population.

He stressed, that in a country with "such a high ratio of military to civilians and real-life military threats, 'nation-army' is not really a matter of a choice, it is about embracing the existing reality."

He emphasized the importance of proper training and administration of the reserve, as the country faces real military challenges and that "all the governmental bodies, civilians and anybody else must precisely realize their role in the defense of the country."

As part of the concept he launched a number of initiatives, aimed at offering more choices to the conscripts facing compulsory military services by creating hybrids between mandatory and professional service types.

He launched programs of introduction of educational programs in the military units, aimed at giving conscripts professional skills and knowledge, particularly in IT field, to empower them for growth after demobilization.

He has also launched a scientific research battalion for conscripts with advanced degrees in various scientific branches.

As opposite to the new text, adopted in 2018, the first National Security Strategy, adopted by the Presidential Decree, contained a dedicated Chapter, called “Republic of Nagorno Karabakh,” and confirmed Armenia’s responsibility to protect the people of Artsakh.

In March 2018, the Ministry of Defense published a document titled the "Seven Year Army Modernization Plan", which envisaged a number of reforms in the sphere of defence.

He was reappointed to the same position by President Armen Sarkissian in 2018.

The "nation-army" term, though frequently discussed during Sargsyan's tenure, fell out of use after he left the post in May 2018.

Sargsyan resigned on 8 May 2018, following the election of Nikol Pashinyan as the Prime Minister of Armenia.

Sargsyan said that he would only continue to act as Defence Minister until a new minister is appointed, citing impossibility of serving as a minister under an administration whose political views, values and methods one does not share and warned the new authorities of potential mistakes in foreign policy, particularly related to the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.

In 2019, Sargsyan joined Massachusetts Institute of Technology as a Sloan Fellow.

He currently resides in the United States.

He is wanted in Armenia on charges of abuse of power during his time as defence minister; Sargsyan rejects the charges as politically motivated.