In the first half of April, the representatives of the government spread contradictory information, denying their own ideas in some places. Old content was being redistributed as something new. Simultaneously, with the start of vaccinations, the anti-vaccination campaign is beginning to heat up.

(function(d,s,id,u){
if (d.getElementById(id)) return;
var js, sjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0],
t = Math.floor(new Date().getTime() / 1000000);
js=d.createElement(s); js.id=id; js.async=1; js.src=u+’?’+t;
sjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js, sjs);
}(document, ‘script’, ‘os-widget-jssdk’, ‘https://www.opinionstage.com/assets/loader.js’));

The plane that was supposed to bring and not bring the captives: The government contradicted itself

On the evening of April 8, information was spread that a group of captives would be returned to Armenia from Baku. The news was confirmed by the spokespersons of the Prime Minister and Deputy Prime Minister Tigran Avinyan. However, the plane landed without any prisoners. This caused great anger and became the cause of contradictory statements.

? The news of the return of the captives was first reported by freenews.am, the director of which is the wife of NA Deputy Speaker Alen Simonyan. On the next day Simonyan said on “Azatutyun TV” that the return of the captives was not an agreement, but that he had “hope that the flight of the plane will bring good news,” and he apologized for the misinformation.

? Unlike Alen Simonyan, the chairman of the NA Standing Committee on Defense and Security, “My Step” member Andranik Kocharyan said, “something has gone wrong regarding the return of the captives.”

? On the same day, the commander of the Russian peacekeeping contingent Rustam Muradov told “Hraparak” the opposite: there was no agreement on returning the captives yesterday and the spread of information was a provocation to mislead the population.

? And during the NA-Government question and answer session, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan bypassed the direct question on the agreement on the return of the captives on April 8.

? Earlier, the office of Deputy Prime Minister Tigran Avinyan, in response to a CivilNet inquiry, stated that the office “has not made any official statement about the captives, and no separate media outlet has been informed about it in advance.” However, “Sputnik Armenia” had cited hence Avinyan’s spokesperson.

Bagratyan is simply sure: The basis is 40 years of political experience

In the “Mirror Club” Angela Tovmasyan said, “they say not to rule out that his [Pashinyan’s] brother Aliyev will support and hand over the captives during the peak of the election.” In response, former Armenian Prime Minister Hrant Bagratyan, taking into account his 40 years of political experience, confidently insisted, “Erdogan and Aliyev will give him election money and he will distribute that money.”

This is not the only case when Aliyev’s money is “brought” to Armenia through this or that pipeline and purpose. Such allegations are regularly made about the Open Society Foundation.

The legend of the pediatric nurse is both Armenian and Azerbaijani

In April, an urban legend spread that “almost 95%” of children born in Kapan between 1978 and 1979 died of intestinal diseases. The culprit was an Azerbaijani nurse who secretly kept the babies’ heads under cold water for a few minutes.

The news heard from “a very reliable source” was published by the Facebook user Igor Avagyan, who was in Kapan at that moment. This post was shared by lurer.com, news aggregator mamul.am and mushroom sites facetime247.ru.

A similar legend was spread on Azerbaijani websites years ago, this time in the role of an Armenian woman who killed an Azerbaijani boy.

The Minister of Justice was wrong: 500,000 people have been vaccinated in Azerbaijan

In an interview with “Aravot,” the Minister of Health Anahit Avanesyan denied the journalist’s claim that 500,000 people had been vaccinated against COVID-19 in Azerbaijan. However, according to the website koronavirusinfo.az, which summarizes coronavirus data, more than half a million people were vaccinated on March 31, a day before the interview was published.

Vaccinations have begun, anti-propaganda has intensified

? A photo was spread on social networks, in which visible bruising and swelling were presented as a result of being vaccinated with AstraZeneca. The author of the photo was unknown, no additional information about the incident was known. Media.am spoke with three specialists: an epidemiologist, a traumatologist and a dermatologist. According to them, such an injury could not be the result of a vaccination, but of a stroke, a vascular problem, an injury or cosmetic medical intervention.

? The Ministry of Health has denied the news spread by Hayeli.am that a person died from the AstraZeneca vaccine in Armenia.

Kocharyan is not the only one: The migration trend since 2018 under Pashinyan is positive for another 3 years.

The second president of Armenia Robert Kocharyan stated in an interview with Russian journalist Vladimir Pozner that only during his presidency there was a positive indicator of migration in Armenia. However, Kocharyan’s assertion is not so true. Fip․am found out that the number of people arriving in Armenia exceeded the number of people leaving the country in 2018, 2019 and 2020 as well.

Aghazaryan contradicts himself

Hovik Aghazaryan, a member of the “My Step” parliamentary faction, told reporters that he referred to the Karvachar issue in the context of the prevailing geopolitical realities and “no one can find in my speech even a hint that can lead me to think that I question the issue of Karvachar’s Armenian affiliation.”

This hint can be easily found, “Kelbajar was not ours either,” he said in an interview with Pastinfo on March 30. It was created by our soldiers in the 90s as a defense zone of Artsakh so that later, those lands would be returned and Artsakh would receive a status. During the same interview, he also asked the question, “Would you or anyone else in Armenia, with so much assurance, tell the whole world that Kelbajar was ours? The whole world said Kelbajar is not yours, my dear boy, give it back quickly. And you would give it back sooner or later, cleverly.”

Pashinyan denied what he had not denied before

Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan stated in the National Assembly that the former head of the General Staff Onik Gasparyan did not say that it was necessary to take measures to stop the war within 2-3 days. This was announced by the head of the General Staff on November 17, 2020.

Pashinyan missed an opportunity to deny Gasparyan. He spoke about this topic in an interview with “Azatutyun TV” a month after the announcement and said that appropriate steps had been taken to stop the war.

The video of the bodies of Armenian soldiers was old

A video appeared on the Internet, in which the remains of the Armenian Armed Forces in the body of the truck were seen. “The bodies of the victims are actually rotting and becoming unrecognizable, and they are officially announcing that the search has not yielded results,” the video distributors wrote. In a conversation with the “Fact-Checking Platform,” the Artsakh State Emergency Service reported that the video is old, and those bodies were handed over to the Armenian side on February 16.

The “proof” that Rita Sargsyan was alive was denied

A photo was spread on the net: 4 women are sitting in one of the cafes in Glendale, and one of them is being compared to Rita Sargsyan. The news of Sargsyan being alive has been circulating since January of this year. Tigran Vardanyan from the Republican Party of Armenia denied the news on his Facebook page, posted another photo of the woman and information about her.

Denials

❌ The Ministry of Defense denied the news that an Azerbaijani-Turkish delegation arrived in Yerevan on April 8. This news was spread against the background of the news of the plane that did not bring the prisoners and was connected with the road corridor passing through Syunik.

❌ The police denied the information about the arrest of criminal Armen Ghazaryan and informed that the video spread by the Telegram channel “Mediaport” is old.

❌ The Ministry of Emergency Situations denied the news spread by Newspress.am that the Minister of Emergency Situations had instructed the “anti-Nikol” employees to submit their resignation. 

❌ Viva-MTS denied the news that the General Director of the company Ralph Yirikian entered politics. It was reported in the press that he will run in the snap parliamentary elections from the team of the second president Robert Kocharyan.

❌ Robert Kocharyan’s office insisted that he “never received any money from the Artsakh budget” after leaving the post of NKR President.

Arshaluys Barseghyan