Armenia MP Tigran Abrahamyan, who represents the opposition With Honor faction, on Saturday reflected on the exposure of a foreign spy ring involving dozens of Armenian military personnel by the National Security Service (NSS).

In a statement on Thursday, the NSS said over 20 servicemen joined the espionage network created by foreign intelligence agencies and received payments for sending classified data on the Armenian army to them. 19 suspects were detained as part of the criminal investigation.

“I would refrain from any assessments for now not to violate the presumption of innocence, but there is a big issue up in the air: how did foreign intelligence services manage to penetrate so deeply into the Armenian armed forces?” Abrahamyan wrote on Facebook.

“The key task of our relevant services is to suppress activities of foreign intelligence services, substantially reduce their opportunities to reach and influence the military.

“Simply put, we still need to understand how such favorable conditions were created for the enemy and why the army and military personnel were so vulnerable. The task should not be simply to eliminate the consequences, but to thoroughly examine the case and its causes.

“Regardless of the details of the proceedings, the authorities benefit from the involvement of the military in such cases, because their pre-selected method of self-justification is to shift the blame onto the army, reserve forces and volunteers, on the principle of ‘what could poor Nikol have done?’,” the MP noted.