In January, Azerbaijani and Russian sources spread misinformation about Armenia in the region. The main topic remains the developments following the 44-day war. Other occasions were the COVID-19 vaccine, claims about the agency network, and so on.

Freely editing when reprinting text: It wasn’t said in Shurnukh that the village was inhabited illegally

Вестник Кавказа, while reprinting Sputnik Armenia’s article about Shurnukh, freely edited it. As a result, the Armenian resident of Shurnukh village confessed that they had inhabited the village illegally. The website attributed this thought to Robert Atabekyan, whose house built 20 years ago is located in the territory returned to Azerbaijan.

However, looking at the source material, it turns out that the only time the word “illegal” was used, was in reference to the demarcation, for which the villagers were protesting. Moreover, the source of Sputnik’s news is the video prepared by the RA government. Its content proves that the resident of Syunik did not make any statement about an “illegal” settlement.

Pro-Azerbaijani Вестник Кавказа is available in two languages: Russian and English. Its general director, as it is mentioned in the state register of Russian legal entities, is an Azerbaijani, Agakishiev Ismail Alovsat Oghli.

Alovsat Oghli is an associate professor at the Department of Near Foreign History at Moscow State University.

And this is not the only case of free editing.

Azerbaijan edited the response of the German Foreign Minister as it saw fit

At the end of January, the Azerbaijani media misrepresented the words of the Chairman of the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe, German Foreign Minister Hayko Maas about the Syrians fighting in Artsakh. Sputnik Azerbaijan,vestikavkaza.ru and other local websites wrote that Maas had said that no facts had been found about the involvement of Syrians. Some have already removed this misinformation.

The Armenian side corrected Azerbaijan. The information fog was dispelled by a high-ranking official of the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Michael Siebert. He posted a transcript of Maas’ speech on Twitter from the website of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe.

#CouncilofEurope: for all those interested in what @HeikoMaas REALLY said on #KarabakhWar at yesterday’s @coe #PACE please see the screenshot ? or visit https://t.co/YjkIDDGC3L. @PACE_News @GermanyDiplo @GermanyCoE pic.twitter.com/wt7Xiwgth8

— Michael Siebert (@GERonOstpolitik) January 27, 2021

It is clear from the full speech of the German Foreign Minister that Maas did not make such an expression. Instead, he noted that they know the issue of Syrian involvement, and this is not the only conflict in which they are involved.

As for Nagorno Karabakh, “Based on the current intelligence, we must assume that some of these Syrian fighters are still in the crisis zone. There are many international efforts to find out how they are used there, how many there are and who is responsible for it. However, there is no final information about them yet,” Maas said. He also spoke about the important role played by Turkey in the second war in Artsakh.

According to Коммерсантъ, Pashinyan-Putin did not have a private conversation

The Russian website Коммерсантъ spread misinformation about the January 11 Putin-Pashinyan-Aliyev trilateral meeting. They wrote that, allegedly, immediately after the briefing following the trilateral meeting, Pashinyan went to the airport. Aliyev, meanwhile, remained in the Kremlin, having a pre-planned private conversation with Putin. He had no reason to hurry and “it seems that he is still using every opportunity to enjoy his victory once again,” the website wrote.

If the author of the article had opened the official website of the Russian president, kremlin.ru, he would have seen that after the meeting with Aliyev, Putin also had a private conversation with the RA Prime Minister.

The doctors also went to Baku before the trilateral meeting

This same publication of Коммерсантъ denies spreading the rumor that Russian doctors had visited only Yerevan before the January 11 trilateral meeting. Such a publication was made by the website EaDaily, citing RIA Novosti.

Коммерсантъ, citing the press secretary of the Russian president, wrote that before the meeting, Moscow and Baku and Yerevan.

The Azerbaijani consulate has turned the pictures of Armenian migrants into Azerbaijani ones in a propaganda film

The Karabakh Records Twitter account wrote on January 20 that the Consulate General of Azerbaijan in Los Angeles had made a film, distorting another episode of the Karabakh conflict. They used a photo in the propaganda film, in which the Armenian refugees from Hadrut are depicted. The Armenians in the Azerbaijani film became Azerbaijanis, who were attacked by the Armenians themselves.

The people of Hadrut were deported in 1991, when Azerbaijan initiated Operation “Koltso” (Ring) to evict the Armenian settlements of Artsakh.

Azerbaijan’s Consulate General in Los Angeles produced a film distorting yet another chapter of the history of Karabakh Conflict.

Images of Armenian refugees from Hadrut taken by @StetinaEP in 1991 during the Operation Ring(Koltso), are now covering??’s falsified records. pic.twitter.com/zePLXfddTN

— Karabakh Records (@KarabakhRecords) January 20, 2021

Karabakh Records account noted the author of the photo, Yaromir Stetina, posted a screenshot of the true location and content of the photo. The author of the picture shared the tweet on his page.

The source of the material was verelq.am, but it does not matter when copying and pasting

The Telegram channel Mediaport wrote on January 25 that amid discussions over the appointment of Lilit Makunts as Armenia’s ambassador to the United States, an article published by the Russian EaDaily in 2019 had been circulating, “which reveals the relations of the” My Step “faction leader with US special services.”

The article mentions that in 2016 Makunts started working in the American “Peace Corps.” Earlier, she had attended a five-day course on “peaceful disobedience” under the auspices of the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) as part of a summer course at the Fletcher Diplomatic School at Tufts University.

Based on this, the author concluded that it would be difficult to teach the toolkit of velvet revolutions in 5 days, “but during that time it was quite possible to recruit her.” This news was reprinted without editing by a number of websites: livenews.am, onnet.am, etc.

But if the websites opened the material before reprinting it, they would have seen that the author is not EaDaily, but verelq.am operating in Armenia. As for Makunts “being turned into” a member of the CIA, the author’s conclusion is manipulative. It is based on several episodes of Makunts’ biography, but there is no evidence of “joining them.” It is only the author’s assumption, and the material is without an author.

AstraZeneca and other vaccines

In parallel with vaccinations, anti-vaccination groups continue to spread misinformation about the coronavirus vaccine. First of all, let’s refer to the misinformation spread about AstraZeneca bought by Armenia.

? It was claimed in the international press that AstraZeneca is only 8% effective among the elderly. The author of this statement, the German newspaper Handelsblatt, referred to an anonymous government source. The same news was spread in Russian and Armenian media.

However, it soon became clear that the journalist (or his source) had confused the number of elderly people who participated in the trials with the vaccine efficiency. People aged 56-69 made up 8% of AstraZeneca test participants and this has nothing to do with effectiveness.

? EUvsDisinfo’s website referred to the Russian campaign for the COVID-19 vaccine. As for Armenia, he wrote that the main source of misinformation is Sputnik Armenia and several Facebook groups. The main misinformation they singled out is:

• The Ministry of Health has launched the next phase of the global offensive – vaccination
• COVID-19 is a biological weapon for a variety of purposes
• The vaccine created by the Armenian businessman Moderna company is deadly.

? DFRLab wrote, as to how the Kremlin-funded media and blogs undermine confidence in foreign-made vaccines.

By the way, Lady Gaga’s video clip and the symbolic false sensational connection between the second Artsakh war is included in the top 20 of EUvsDisinfo 2020 disinformation.

Arshaluys Barseghyan