The video, which was posted on the “Public News” Facebook page on September 20, has garnered more than 141,000 views and has been presented as a “scandalous revelation” by Alexander Lapshin. However, in the video, Lapshin’s actual statement is rewritten in a significantly different way; the most important difference is the case of Gevorg Sujyan. The day after the publication, on September 19, Sujyan announced that his application against Azerbaijan had been submitted to the ECHR and accepted by the court.

Lapshin reported that Armenian former prisoners refused to apply to the ECHR: what was actually said

What did the viral video claim?

A video posted on the Public News page on September 20 said that Russian-Israeli blogger Alexander Lapshin was “scandalous”

“details” about the cases of former Armenian prisoners of war held in Azerbaijan.

The video’s key claim was that four former servicemen who spent years in Azerbaijani prisons had refused to apply to the European Court of Human Rights against Azerbaijan because they were

According to the story presented, a “very important official” in Armenia advised against going to court.

This formulation, from a fact-checking perspective, contains several separate claims, and each of them needs to be verified separately.

The first problem is related to the number and scope of people.

According to several sources who have published a statement by Alexander Lapshin on September 18, he spoke about four former Armenian prisoners of war for whom he and French lawyers

had prepared documents for applications to the ECHR against Azerbaijan. However, according to Lapshin, three of the four had refused to submit applications, and the fourth, Gevorg Sujyan, had chosen other lawyers. Lapshin noted that at that time he did not know whether Sujyan would later apply.

ECHR or not?

In other words, the wording “all four refused” does not even correspond to the statement to which the video refers. Moreover, at the time of the video’s publication, Gevorg Sujyan’s public statement already existed, which completely changes the factual picture of this segment.

On September 19, the day before the video was released, Sujyan announced that his application to the ECHR against Azerbaijan had been submitted and accepted, and that his representative at the European Court was lawyer Siranush Sahakyan. This statement was also published by the media.

Therefore, including Sujyan in the September 20 video as part of the group that “refused to go to court” actually contradicts Sujyan’s own public statement made the day before.

At the same time, another correction is important. The video talks about “four former servicemen,” while the four individuals who returned to Armenia on January 14 were Gevorg Sujyan, Davit Davtyan, Vigen Euljekchyan, and Vagif Khachatryan. Public sources describe Sujyan and Davtyan as individuals engaged in humanitarian activities, while Vigen

Euljekchyan and Vagif Khachatryan were also presented as civilians. For example, according to Hetq, Euljekchyan was a citizen who was in Shushi to collect personal belongings and was not a participant in the fighting, while Sujyan and Davtyan were captured while transporting humanitarian aid.

Gevorg Sujyan himself also clarified in the comment he gave us that he was not a military man. According to him, he was a member of the “New Armenia”

He was the founding president of the “Homeland-Diaspora” charitable organization and transported large-scale humanitarian aid to Artsakh during the war.

Thus, there are at least two significant distortions here: “four refused” and “four former servicemen.”

Who is Gevorg Sujyan, and who is Alexander Lapshin?

Gevorg Sujyan and David Davtyan were captured by Azerbaijan on November 11, 2020, after the end of the war, in the Berdzor-Shushi direction. Sujyan “New Armenia Homeland-Diaspora”

was the founding president of the charitable NGO. On January 14, 2026, they returned to Armenia with Vigen Euljekchyan and Vagif Khachatryan.

Sujyan was sentenced to a long prison sentence in Azerbaijan while in captivity. After returning to Armenia, he publicly spoke about the violence he allegedly suffered, the procedural violations, and the years he spent in a Baku prison.

Alexander Lapshin is a Russian-Israeli blogger and journalist. He visited Artsakh in 2011 and 2012, was arrested in Belarus in 2016 at the request of Azerbaijan, and was extradited to Azerbaijan in 2017, where he

He was sentenced to three years in prison. In September of the same year, Ilham Aliyev pardoned him.

Lapshin and Azerbaijan’s story also has a legal sequel. In 2021, the European Court of Human Rights found a violation of Article 2 of the Convention in his case due to the lack of an effective investigation into the prison incident that threatened his life and the failure of Azerbaijan to provide a sufficient and convincing explanation.

It is because of this past that Lapshin has been actively addressing the rights of Armenians held in Azerbaijan in recent years. He also published an interview with Sujyan about his years in a Baku prison.

On April 5, 2026, Lapshin was denied entry to Armenia. Lapshin claimed that border guards linked the decision to his interview with Sujyan. However, Armenian authorities have not publicly confirmed Lapshin’s account.

the reasoning.

This fact is also important in the context of current history, but the reason for Lapshin’s entry ban and its connection to Sujyan’s interview is not a documented circumstance, but a hypothesis presented by Lapshin.

What did Lapshin actually say, and what did Public News add?

Lapshin’s statement does indeed claim that three former Armenian prisoners of war refused to file applications against Azerbaijan with the ECHR after documents prepared by him and French lawyers.

He also claimed that these people told him that something “very

important person” advised not to file the lawsuits. However, Lapshin did not name that person and did not provide any evidence of pressure. That

This fact is also confirmed by the media outlets that reproduced his statement.

In other words, three levels must be distinguished here:

Fact 1: Lapshin made such a statement while speaking about three former prisoners.

Fact 2: Lapshin claimed that the three were motivated by the advice of some influential person in Armenia. This claim is not supported by public evidence.

to be established.

Fact 3: Gevorg Sujyan publicly stated that he had applied to the ECHR against Azerbaijan, and his application was accepted.

Therefore, the Public News video took the real

the basis of the statement, but presented it in a significantly altered context.

In the commentary Sujyan provided to us, he says that Lapshin

was well aware of his application to the ECHR. According to him, he sent Lapshin’s material to his lawyer Siranush Sahakyan, and the lawyer was ready to provide Lapshin with the necessary details. Sujyan also says that he personally informed Lapshin of the incorrectness of the information being disseminated.

about. These claims by Sujyan are his own statements, and we cannot independently verify the content of the entire communication between them. However, Sujyan’s statement about applying to the ECHR is already a public fact, and its date, September 19, precedes the September 20 video of “Public News.”

For the same reason, the formulation “as a result, Baku’s crimes remained unpunished” cannot be presented as confirmed either.

fact. If a former prisoner did not file an application with the ECHR, there might not have been a court hearing in that particular case, but it does not follow that

All alleged or recorded violations by Azerbaijan “have gone unpunished.” There are numerous other cases against Azerbaijan before the ECHR, including Lapshin’s own case, in which the court found violations in 2021.

to record.

“Public News” page: how to create the impression of credibility

According to our research, the “Public News” page has about 2.7

thousand followers, 19 posts, and in the bio it says that

Artificial intelligence is used to create materials. The page also has a “Journalist” category on Facebook and provides a website and phone number.

However, the “Journalist” category itself is not proof of journalistic accreditation or official status of a media outlet. The same applies to the “100% recommended (5 reviews)” indicator: a positive rating from five users is not a measure of the actual reliability of a news source.

This particular video, according to the data provided, has received approximately 141 thousand views, 1,500 likes, 181 comments, 274 shares, and 81 saves. These numbers, as impressive as they are, cannot replace checking the source and facts.

The structure of the page’s posts is also noteworthy: they are mainly short videos (Reels), and the most viewed

One of the publications has political content: “Arush

Arushanyan is the CP candidate in Goris” and, according to which, has collected about 358 thousand views. However, a large number of views, likes or shares is not proof of the veracity of any information. Viral

The spread indicates the extent of dissemination, not the factuality of the claim.

Moreover, the page itself discloses the use of AB in the production of the video in its biography.

Visual examination of the video footage also provides additional clues that are consistent with a synthetic/AI-generated host.

Cons: too smooth and uniform skin texture on the face, some unnatural smoothing of the hair and ear edges, too “clean” movement of the lips and jaw area, limited naturalness of eye and facial micro-movements, as well as possible instability of small details in the hands, fingers, and paper areas.

These, however, are not conclusive evidence in isolation. Specialized fact-checking guides also warn that

In the case of modern AB videos, a single visual “mark” is not enough: it is necessary to combine visual examination of the video, the source, the context, and independent sources.

In this case, the strongest evidence of the use of AB is no longer the host’s ear, lip, or hand, but the page’s own

The discovery that AB is used to create materials.

And what is the final fact-checking result?

It claims: “Lapshin reported that four former Armenian servicemen have refused to apply to the ECHR against Azerbaijan.”

Rating: FALSE/DISAGREEING.

Lapshin spoke publicly about four former prisoners, three of whom, according to his claim, had not filed applications. The fourth, Gevorg Sujyan, according to Lapshin’s information at the time, had chosen another

lawyers, and Lapshin did not know whether he later applied to the ECHR or not.

However, on September 19, the day before the Public News video, Gevorg Sujyan announced that the ECHR application against Azerbaijan in his case had been submitted and accepted, and mentioned the name of his lawyer, Siranush Sahakyan.

Therefore, including Sujyan among those who “did not go to court” is a factual error.

Moreover, the video’s description of “four former servicemen” also does not correspond to public biographical data: Sujyan and Davtyan are presented as engaged in humanitarian activities.

individuals, and at least in the case of Vigen Euljekchyan, the sources clearly state that he was a civilian and was not a participant in the hostilities.

And the part “a very important official urged them not to apply” is an unproven claim made by Lapshin. The person is not named, and there is no public evidence confirming that such an official actually gave that instruction. Therefore, that part should be presented as an unconfirmed statement, not as fact.

Finally, the question of “who was interested in silencing the international process” is presented in the video as a fact-based context, while in the materials we studied, there is no sufficient evidence of any specific force, official, or organization silencing the process in an organized manner.

The same applies to Gevorg Sujyan’s view that “external forces” may be behind Lapshin’s actions, or that their connection may reach Russia and Samvel Karapetyan’s political circles. These are Sujyan’s personal assessments and suspicions, and they are not factually confirmed by the available materials. Presenting them as a confirmed fact would already be a risk of new disinformation. Thus, it is more correct to characterize this case as misleading information spread with a significant distortion of the real statement.

Journalist: Sargis Asatryan

The material was prepared within the framework of the Disinformation Flows Monitoring Project.

#CivilSocietyCooperation #ishrarmenia #ishrfactcheck

The project is implemented with the financial support of the Federal Foreign Office of the Federal Republic of Germany.