The Moldovan recipe is repeated in Yerevan. Russia has launched an all-out digital war to block Armenia's European passport
The Kremlin is pressing the gas pedal of disinformation in the South Caucasus. One of the most aggressive and sophisticated manipulation campaigns in recent years is currently targeting Armenia, with the aim of sabotaging and discrediting the parliamentary elections scheduled for June 7, Euronews reports.
After the major failures recorded by the pro-Russian forces in the Republic of Moldova, Hungary and Romania, Moscow uses all the remaining asymmetric levers in order not to definitively lose control over a former historical ally. The attack scheme copies almost to the letter the scenario applied by the Russian secret services in the fall of 2025, during the election in Chisinau.
The scarecrow of war and the “secret agreements” with Paris
By early May, international monitoring had identified no less than 343 deepfake videos. Behind this massive operation is the famous pro-Kremlin “Matrioshka” network, a structure specialized in information manipulation that uses advanced Artificial Intelligence tools on a large scale.
The central narrative injected into the public space in Armenia relies on fear: a possible victory of the incumbent Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian, who is running on a solidly pro-European platform, would drag the country into a direct military conflict with the Russian Federation.
To give weight to this lie, the propaganda labs released more than a dozen fake clips featuring Nikol Pashinian and French President Emmanuel Macron. The message delivered to the public is hallucinatory: France would politically support Yerevan in exchange for a secret promise that Armenia would open a military front against Russia immediately after the elections. In addition, on May 11, the fake news machine claimed that NATO instructors were already in the country ready to cause a conflict of proportions.
The Shadow of the Storm-1516 Network and Financial Disinformation Tactics
In addition to the deepfake factory, cybersecurity experts have detected the activation of another Russian manipulation network known as Storm-1516. Closely monitored by Germany's foreign intelligence service (BND) and the French state agency Viginum, this structure is categorized as a tool to destabilize Western democratic institutions.
According to Clemson University researchers, Storm-1516 has been active since January. In addition to the classic political attacks, the network launched corruption charges against the Armenian prime minister, falsely claiming that he had diverted $11 million (9.5 million euros) of Eurasian Economic Union funds intended for digitization to illegally finance his election campaign.
From Kremlin fury to Putin's direct threat
This unprecedented digital offensive does not occur in a political vacuum, but against the backdrop of a growing rift between Yerevan and Moscow. At the beginning of May, the first EU-Armenia summit took place, a historic event that caused maximum irritation in the Kremlin.
Just a few days after this summit, during the press conference organized in Moscow on the occasion of Victory Day, President Vladimir Putin delivered a brutal warning, drawing a dangerous parallel between Armenia and Ukraine. The Russian leader warned that Yerevan's ambitions to join the European Union could attract similar consequences to those on the Ukrainian front.
In fact, Moscow is trying to reverse the reality, accusing the West of interference. As early as January, Russian diplomacy claimed that the European Union was pushing Armenian leaders to falsify the parliamentary vote – the same rhetoric used against Chisinau before pro-European forces in the Republic of Moldova won the election.
Armenia is taking firm steps towards getting out from under Moscow's umbrella. Nikol Pashinian recently stated, unequivocally, that his country is no longer Russia's ally in the Ukrainian file and confirmed the sending of humanitarian aid to Kiev. It remains to be seen whether the resilience of Armenian society will be strong enough to withstand the Kremlin's informational onslaught, or whether digital manipulation will succeed in blocking Yerevan's path to the West.
