Pashinyan dismisses Armenia’s state protocol chief Gagik Vanoyan

Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan dismissed Gagik Vanoyan as head of the State Protocol Service on Monday, RIA Novosti reported on October 20.

The decision was published on the government’s legal acts platform, Armenia Today reported. Hraparak newspaper, citing government sources, linked the dismissal to Pashinyan’s verbal slip while welcoming Sadyr Japarov. The official decision gave no reason for his removal.

At their joint briefing in Yerevan, the prime minister referred to Kyrgyzstan’s president as the president of Kazakhstan. According to Hraparak’s sources, Pashinyan was reading a text prepared by the protocol service.