Narek Karapetyan, the nephew of jailed Russian–Armenian tycoon Samvel Karapetyan, this week appeared on the talk show of influential far-right US pundit and conspiracy theorist Tucker Carlson to discuss his uncle’s criminal case and claims the Armenian government is cracking down on the Armenian Apostolic Church.
During the show, which was published on Sunday, Narek Karapetyan, Carlson, and Robert Amsterdam — Samvel Karapetyan’s lawyer — criticized the government of Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and accused him of being ‘intent on destroying traditional Christianity or the church’.
Narek Karapetyan claimed that Pashinyan is trying to make Armenia ‘less Christian’, while Carlson, without citing any sources, alleged that Pashinyan is ‘focusing on transgenderism as a good thing [and the] LGBTQ agenda, whatever that is’.
Samvel Karapetyan, owner of the Russia-based Tashir Group conglomerate and one of Armenia’s wealthiest figures, was arrested in June on charges of inciting ‘public calls to seize power’ after publicly defending the Armenian Apostolic Church during a government dispute with the clergy.
From jail, he founded the Our Way (Mer Dzevov) political movement, which his nephew is also involved in. The movement is expected to field candidates to compete against Pashinyan and his ruling Civil Contract party in the 2026 parliamentary elections.
After his arrest, Samvel Karapetyan acquired Amsterdam and his law firm as legal counsel. Amsterdam and his law firm have taken on a variety of high-profile clients in human rights cases around the world, including Russian dissident Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Georgian businessperson Giorgi Bachiashvili, a former aide of Georgian Dream’s billionaire founder Bidzina Ivanishvili. Amsterdam has also represented the Turkish government, and more recently, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate (UOC-MP), which has been accused of maintaining links with the Russian Orthodox Church, an organization closely linked with the Kremlin.
