On March 10, Edita Gzoyan, Director of the Armenian Genocide Museum-Institute (AGMI), submitted her resignation and was dismissed from her position. Media reports about the possible reasons for her resignation appeared immediately and were confirmed two days later by Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan himself. During a briefing on March 13, Pashinyan confirmed that Gzoyan had written her resignation at his instruction.
The reason for this decision was that, during U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance’s visit to the AGMI in February of this year, Gzoyan presented him with a book related to the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict. Following the visit, Gzoyan told Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty that, among other books, she had gifted the U.S. Vice President a volume on Armenian–Tatar clashes between 1905 and 1921.
Justifying his decision, Pashinyan described this act as contrary to the government’s foreign policy and as provocative. He stated that the government’s official position is that the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict is over and that Armenia will not continue it. By giving Vance a book related to the conflict, Gzoyan, in his view, had contradicted the government’s official stance. Notably, the book gifted by Gzoyan was actually a collection of historical accounts about Armenian–Tatar clashes between 1905 and 1921, rather than a work about the contemporary phase of the Karabakh conflict.