Armenia is currently experiencing a surge of disinformation campaigns, especially as parliamentary elections draw near. It’s like a relentless barrage of false stories and accusations, all designed to muddle the waters and sway public opinion. The Prime Minister’s press secretary, Nazeli Baghdasaryan, has been tirelessly working to counter these attacks, constantly calling out fabricated claims and setting the record straight. For instance, there was this outrageous story recently that accused the Prime Minister and other high-ranking officials of being involved in organ trafficking. Baghdasaryan vehemently denied these claims, calling them “disinformation” and “hybrid information actions” – a fancy way of saying they’re cleverly crafted lies meant to sow discord. It’s a sad reality that these campaigns are becoming more sophisticated, making it harder for people to discern truth from fiction, especially when they touch on emotionally charged topics.
The tactics used in these disinformation campaigns are quite alarming. Fact-checking organizations like CivilNet have dug into how these false narratives spread, and what they found is a disturbing pattern. These baseless claims, designed to influence voters, often pop up first on social media, spread by anonymous accounts or even older, dormant accounts that suddenly spring back to life. Then, Russian-language Telegram channels jump into the fray, often creating fake front pages of well-known French publications to give their lies an air of legitimacy. It’s a coordinated effort to manipulate public perception, using sensitive issues like healthcare and organ trafficking to stir up emotions and undermine trust in government and its leaders. Nazeli Baghdasaryan highlighted how these stories typically evolve: they appear on social media, then get picked up by Azerbaijani media, and finally, “certain political circles” in Armenia amplify them further. It’s a classic playbook for spreading fake news in the region, aimed at creating a “shocking and discrediting information backdrop.”
A prime example of this deceptive strategy involved a supposed “Macron-Pashinyan deal.” During a visit by Prime Minister Pashinyan to France, a Telegram channel called “Odessa Za Pobedu!” circulated a narrative claiming that French President Emmanuel Macron was pressuring Pashinyan to confront Russia, even offering support after elections if he started a war. To make this outrageous claim seem real, the post displayed images of what were presented as the front pages of prominent French newspapers like Libération and Le Parisien, and even a French Jewish community outlet, ActuJ. Another Telegram channel echoed these claims, citing Libération as reporting that Pashinyan was seeking a deal with Macron to “provoke a conflict with Russia.” This was a boldfaced lie, designed to create an illusion of credibility.
CivilNet, through their meticulous fact-checking, exposed the truth: all the supposed front pages were fake. A quick check of the actual newspapers from those dates revealed entirely different stories and images. Libération’s actual front page featured Donald Trump, while Le Parisien focused on rising fuel prices. ActuJ, being a weekly paper, had completely different content on its issues around that time. This meticulous effort to fabricate evidence, from creating fake newspaper covers to doctoring headlines, shows the lengths to which these disinformation operatives will go to mislead the public. It serves as a stark reminder that in the digital age, we must be vigilant and critical of the information we consume, especially when it comes from unverified sources and seems too sensational to be true.
The disinformation machine didn’t stop there. Another circulating video, shared on X (formerly Twitter), went a step further, claiming that under this “secret Macron-Pashinyan deal,” Armenian political consultants were sent to France to learn vote manipulation techniques for the upcoming elections. To lend a veneer of credibility to this completely unfounded assertion, the video shamelessly used the logo of NewsGuard, a reputable US-based fact-checking organization. This is a particularly insidious tactic, as it leverages the trust people place in legitimate fact-checkers to peddle false narratives. When journalists investigated further, they found that the video was initially shared by a user named Jocelyn McMorrow, whose X account had been inactive since 2013 before suddenly reactivating on March 9, 2026. This sudden resurrection of a dormant account is a tell-tale sign of its repurposing for information campaigns, a common tactic used by those behind disinformation.
These sophisticated methods of manipulation are not isolated incidents; they mirror similar disinformation campaigns observed in France, where fake stories often use logos of well-known media outlets or fabricated front pages to create a false sense of authority. CivilNet aptly compared these tactics to a “Matryoshka” campaign, where false or fabricated materials first surface on social media platforms and are then amplified by coordinated networks of accounts and channels. This layered approach ensures that the fake news reaches as wide an audience as possible, making it incredibly challenging for ordinary citizens to distinguish between genuine news and carefully constructed falsehoods. In essence, it’s a relentless information war, with the truth as its primary casualty, and the Armenian public caught in the crossfire as elections loom.