![\"Fakenews\"](\"https:\/\/humanrights-online.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/fakenews.jpg\")
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After the parliamentary elections in Armenia, the intensity of disinformation flows has not decreased. Instead, their forms, targets, and tools have changed. While direct propaganda narratives about the legitimacy of the election results, migration threats, and foreign policy orientation dominated during the pre-election period, in the post-election period information attacks have focused on state institutions, the security environment, and the foundations of public trust.<\/span><\/p>\n One of the most notable incidents of the past week <\/span>was a fake video<\/span><\/a> posted on the X platform , in which the RA Ministry of Internal Affairs\u2019 Regional Seismic Protection Service announced that a 7.4-magnitude earthquake was expected in the Kotayk region in the coming weeks. The video also contained a fake link to the United States Geological Survey (USGS), which had allegedly published a corresponding seismic risk assessment. The Ministry of Internal Affairs publicly denied the video, noting that accurate earthquake prediction is currently considered an unsolved scientific problem, and no state or international organization makes such predictions.<\/span><\/p>\n This episode is important not only as an isolated case of disinformation. It demonstrates a deeper logic of information influence: the goal is not to warn people, but to form distrust in the state communication system and create an atmosphere of panic. In crisis situations, the behavior of society largely depends on trust in state institutions, and when this trust is purposefully weakened, society becomes more vulnerable not only to informational, but also to real emergencies.<\/span><\/p>\n During the same period, the Ministry of Internal Affairs was forced to refute two more publications: the article titled \u201cBayraktar\u2019s partner won the government tender\u201d and the article on the biometric system tender. Taken separately, these cases can be perceived as ordinary false publications, but their cumulative effect is deeper: disinformation spread on behalf of state bodies creates the impression that the state administration system operates in a non-transparent manner, has hidden interests, or is involved in corrupt processes. This method is a widely used tool in information wars, since it is aimed not at criticizing one specific decision, but at the gradual erosion of state legitimacy.<\/span><\/p>\n The incidents documented by CivilNetCheck illustrate another important trend: the commercialization of disinformation. The \u201cHayastan Jan\u201d Facebook page, which has around 160,000 followers, published a post on July 1 that created the impression that there were casualties and injuries as a result of hailstorms in the Lori region. In reality, the hailstorm occurred on June 20, and there was no such information in official sources at all. The same page also spread the news of a \u201csabotage attack\u201d in Sotk, citing a post that effectively denied the claims of shooting or attempted infiltration by Azerbaijani forces.<\/span><\/p>\n These cases show that a significant part of disinformation no longer has only political goals. The so-called \u201cpanic economy\u201d has been created, the logic of which is simple: panic \u2192 clicks \u2192 advertising revenue. However, this model is dangerous not only from a commercial point of view: it creates a ready-made infrastructure that can be used at any time by political actors or external influence centers for rapid and \u201corganic\u201d dissemination.<\/span><\/p>\n Unlike one-off fake news, the external campaign against the Armenian elections has been documented by several independent research centers, which makes it possible to speak in concrete numbers, not just general descriptions.<\/span><\/p>\n According to data from botnet research group Antibot4Navalny, cited by <\/span>Euronews\u2019 The Cube project<\/span><\/a> , as of early May, 343 fake, artificial intelligence-generated videos had been circulating as part of a pro-Russian campaign known as \u201cMatryoshka\u201d since early March. Analysts have described it as one of the largest campaigns in recent years, second only to the 2025 Moldovan elections.<\/span><\/p>\n More detailed data on the parallel Storm-1516 network has been published by NewsGuard, analyzing, as noted by the American <\/span>FDD Research Center<\/span><\/a> , that the campaign began as early as April 2025 and involves Storm-1516, as well as the \u201cFoundation to Battle Injustice\u201d network, both of which were previously active in campaigns conducted in the United States, Germany, France, and Moldova. A particular indicator is the prevalence of one fake news item: a false claim about the cession of territory to Azerbaijan has collected more than 17 million views on the X platform, while other publications have made unfounded accusations of embezzlement against the Pashinyan family. NewsGuard has also documented that the artificial intelligence models of Meta, Perplexity, You.com, and Mistral have unintentionally contributed to the further spread of these fakes, presenting them as reliable information.<\/span><\/p>\n A broader context is provided by <\/span>a Reuters report, cited in a Wikipedia article<\/span><\/a> , which, citing five Western intelligence sources, states that Russia has considered a scheme to move up to 100,000 Armenian voters from Russia at a cost of approximately $50 million, and also cites documents attributed to the \u201cSocial Design Agency\u201d (an entity sanctioned by the EU and the UK) proposing to create a new media outlet for Armenians living in Russia called \u201cYerevan1\u201d in order to create negative sentiment towards Pashinyan.<\/span><\/p>\n According to the analysis of the London-based <\/span><\/span>RUSI Center<\/span><\/span><\/a> , the campaign began in April 2025, almost seven months earlier than the comparable campaign against Moldova, which indicates that this is not a short-term electoral intervention, but a long-term strategic investment. <\/span><\/span>The Renew Europe faction of the European Parliament<\/span><\/span><\/a> also pointed out an episode of direct political pressure in a statement: on April 1, Putin personally appealed to Pashinyan to allow the candidacy of the imprisoned pro-Russian billionaire Samvel Karapetyan in the elections.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Against this background, it is also worth mentioning an episode at the domestic level: <\/span>in an interview with Factor TV<\/span><\/a> , former member of the Turkish National Assembly and Carnegie Endowment expert Karo Paylan publicly described as disinformation the claims that the opening of the Armenian-Turkish border would lead to the \u201cTurkification\u201d of Armenia through the immigration of hundreds of thousands of Azerbaijanis. Compared to the campaign described above, validated by numbers and independent research, this is a narrative of demographic fear of a lower intensity, but operating with the same logic, which shows how the topic of opening the borders has become a separate target on several parallel levels.<\/span><\/p>\n On June 3, after the elections, <\/span>the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) issued an official statement<\/span><\/a> accusing the European Union of \u201caggressively\u201d trying to push the Russian Orthodox Church out of Armenia, making a \u201ccomplete severance\u201d of religious ties with Moscow a prerequisite for EU integration. As \u201cevidence,\u201d the SVR cited a publication by two Armenian civic organizations, the Union of Informed Citizens and the Vanadzor office of the Helsinki Citizens\u2019 Assembly, concerning allegations of election interference by a priest from a church operating at the Russian 102nd military base in Gyumri.<\/span><\/p>\n EUvsDisinfo<\/span><\/a> (the monitoring tool of the EU External Action Service) has classified this claim as a recurring disinformation narrative, part of a broader \u201cWest vs. Orthodoxy\u201d series, similar versions of which have already been used against Ukraine and the Baltic states. The chronology is also important: this narrative was activated already after the vote, which shows that the post-election information struggle is moving not only into the political, but also religious and civilizational spheres.<\/span><\/p>\n An analysis of dozens of cases accumulated in the EUvsDisinfo database shows that the narratives used against Armenia are rarely independent and new: they are mostly ready-made templates that are reactivated depending on the situation. Below are four such templates, each based on a specific case documented by EUvsDisinfo:<\/span><\/p>\n The repetitive nature of these four templates (the same theses are present in the EUvsDisinfo database in different formulations, used over the years against both Armenia and other countries) shows that we are not talking about one-time fabrications, but about reusable, situationally adaptable information modules that are ready to be activated regardless of the specific occasion.<\/span><\/p>\n A comparison of the events of recent weeks allows us to distinguish four interconnected layers of disinformation:<\/span><\/p>\n The first two layers are usually quickly refuted by government agencies or fact-checking platforms (CivilNetCheck, inFact). The third and fourth, however, are more stable and harder to counter, as they rely on specialized infrastructure (botnets, funding, targeted AI content) and long-term narrative investment.<\/span><\/p>\n The volume of disinformation has not decreased since the elections. Only its targets and methods have changed: instead of direct electoral narratives, the focus has shifted to institutional legitimacy, religious issues, and state trust. Independent analyses by Euronews, Reuters, NewsGuard, RUSI, and EUvsDisinfo confirm and complement the cases recorded by Armenian fact-checking centers (Ministry of Internal Affairs, CivilNetCheck), showing that this is not an isolated, local phenomenon, but an internationally documented, coordinated process. This process coincides with the process of challenging the election results in the Constitutional Court, which allows us to assume that a new wave of disinformation is possible in the coming weeks, already related to the Constitutional Court decision and its political consequences. The elections are over, but the information struggle is still ongoing.<\/span><\/p>\n The material was prepared within the framework of the “Information Flow Monitoring” project.<\/span><\/p>\n The project is funded by the German Foreign Ministry.<\/span><\/p>\n #CivilSocietyCooperation #ishrfact-check<\/span><\/p>\n Marine Kharatyan<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Disinformation has not receded since the elections: only the targets and methods have changed After the parliamentary elections in Armenia, the intensity of disinformation flows has not decreased. Instead, their forms, targets, and tools have changed. While direct propaganda narratives about the legitimacy of the election results, migration threats, and foreign policy orientation dominated during the pre-election period, in the post-election period information attacks have focused on state institutions, the<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":113,"featured_media":76617,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"slim_seo":{"title":"Disinformation has not receded since the elections: only the targets and methods have changed - Menschenrechte Osteuropa - News & Konflikte","description":"Disinformation has not receded since the elections: only the targets and methods have changed After the parliamentary elections in Armenia, the intensity of dis"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[220,218,471],"tags":[1381],"class_list":["post-76616","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-armenia","category-bl-en","category-country-armenia-en-2","tag-opr-armenia-2026"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/humanrights-online.org\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76616","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/humanrights-online.org\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/humanrights-online.org\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/humanrights-online.org\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/113"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/humanrights-online.org\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=76616"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/humanrights-online.org\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76616\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":76625,"href":"https:\/\/humanrights-online.org\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76616\/revisions\/76625"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/humanrights-online.org\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/76617"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/humanrights-online.org\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=76616"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/humanrights-online.org\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=76616"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/humanrights-online.org\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=76616"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Fake earthquake warning: a blow to institutional trust<\/span><\/strong><\/h2>\n
Fake publications spread on behalf of state bodies as a systemic tactic<\/span><\/strong><\/h2>\n
The “panic economy”: when misinformation becomes a business<\/span><\/strong><\/h2>\n
“Matryoshka” and Storm-1516: a campaign validated by numbers<\/span><\/h2>\n
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The narrative being built around the Orthodox Church<\/span><\/h2>\n
The narratives used against Armenia <\/span><\/strong>are not new.<\/span><\/strong><\/h2>\n
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Four-layer structure<\/span><\/strong><\/h2>\n
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Conclusion<\/span><\/strong><\/h2>\n
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