General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation
In late April 2005, in an interview to an Azerbaijani newspaper "Realniy Azerbaijan", the former Russian secret service agent Alexander Litvinenko accused the Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU) of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation of having organised the Armenian parliament shooting, ostensibly to derail the peace process which would have resolved the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, but he offered no evidence to support the accusation. In May 2005, the Russian embassy in Armenia denied any such involvement, and described Litvinenko's accusation as an attempt to harm relations between Armenia and Russia by people against the democratic reforms in Russia. The Armenian National Security Service also denied the Russian involvement in the shootings. The NSS spokesman Artsvin Baghramyan stated "not a single fact or even a hint relating to Litvinenko's theory emerged during the trial." President Robert Kocharyan's national security adviser, Garnik Isagulyan, called Litvinenko a "sick man."