Armenians voted on Sunday in an election seen as a test of Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan’s pro-Western course, with his ruling Civil Contract party claiming victory with 49.8 percent of the vote, according to final results released on Monday.
The vote was for Armenia’s unicameral National Assembly, which has at least 101 seats.
The election drew attention far beyond Armenia because of the country’s strategic position in the South Caucasus, its unresolved tensions with Azerbaijan and the broader contest between Russian and Western influence in the region.
Pashinyan, who came to power in 2018, has moved Armenia closer to the European Union and the United States after years of close ties with Russia.
Moscow was long Armenia’s main security partner, but relations deteriorated after Azerbaijan retook control of the Nagorno-Karabakh region in 2023 and Armenia accused Russia of failing to protect its interests.
Krzysztof Fedorowicz, a professor at Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, western Poland, told public broadcaster Polish Radio that Russia had taken steps to disrupt Armenia’s democratic election process, using methods similar to those seen in elections in Moldova, Romania and Georgia.
He said the campaign was concentrated mainly on social media.
"It is the repetition of various kinds of fakes, nonsense that has nothing to do with the truth," Fedorowicz said. “But it is also simply scaring people.”
One example involved fabricated materials purporting to come from the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), a US-based think tank. The false reports claimed that a victory for Pashinyan’s camp would trigger war with Russia, a threat made publicly by Vladimir Putin.
Pro-Kremlin media also spread claims about an alleged secret agreement between Pashinyan and French President Emmanuel Macron.
Fake images of pages from French newspapers, including Libération, were used to make the claims appear more credible.
The independent investigative outlet Agentstvo.Novosti, which Russian authorities have designated as a "foreign agent," reported that Russian actors had posted a series of videos online warning of a possible war between Armenia and Russia.
The campaign also used manipulated entertainment content. United24 Media reported that fabricated videos featuring actors from the US version of the sitcom The Office urged voters not to support Pashinyan.
The videos were most likely based on material from Cameo, a platform where users can pay celebrities to record short personalized messages, and then altered using artificial intelligence.
"These are entire troll farms and people who publish these messages and try to talk about a conspiracy by the previous authorities, that the West is conspiring against Armenians, that Nikol Pashinyan is some kind of Western project,” Fedorowicz said.
He added that the disinformation campaign also attacked the European Union through social and cultural issues.
A fake group calling itself the Armenian Union of Queers circulated AI-generated images of Pashinyan at a pride parade in Yerevan, Armenia’s capital. The aim was to suggest that his government supported LGBT+ causes in a way that threatened traditional family values.
Fedorowicz said this was a sensitive issue in Armenia.
'Pay to play'
Reporters Without Borders (RSF) also warned that Armenia’s online information space had been affected by a "pay to play" system, in which political forces buy media and digital visibility.
The organization said entertainment pages on Facebook had spread identical messages accusing Pashinyan of damaging relations with Moscow and causing economic problems.
Armenian outlet CivilNet also analyzed websites publishing content from fake Facebook accounts. It said some of the messages supported Pashinyan or attacked opposition parties, and linked the accounts to Taron Chakhoyan, a close associate of the prime minister.
The campaign took place against the backdrop of Armenia’s changing foreign policy direction.
Since independence in 1991, Armenia maintained close relations with Russia, its largest trading partner and, until recently, its main security guarantor.
Pashinyan’s government has sought to reduce that dependence while pursuing closer ties with the West.
(rt/gs)
Source: PAP