EU Interference and Armenia’s 2026 Elections | Ep 543, May 10, 2026

Conversations on Groong - May 10, 2026

Hovhannes Ishkhanyan and Nare Navasardyan discuss the growing role of the EU, fact-checking networks, and counter-disinformation programs in Armenia's 2026 election environment. The conversation examines claims of foreign interference, the use of "hybrid threats" and "disinformation" labels against domestic dissent, and the political bias of Armenia's fact-checking ecosystem. The guests also share personal experiences with lawsuits, public confrontation, protest, and censorship, raising broader questions about free speech, election fairness, and the management of Armenia's information space.

Topics:

• EU role in Armenia's elections
• Fact-checkers and political bias
• Dissent labeled as disinformation
• Lawsuits, pressure, and intimidation
• Censorship and social media control

Guests:

• Nare Navasardyan
• Hovhannes Ishkhanyan

Hosts:

• Hovik Manucharyan
• Asbed Bedrossian

Episode 543 | Recorded: May 7, 2026

SHOW NOTES: https://podcasts.groong.org/543

VIDEO: https://youtu.be/wapw0tYOafg

#Armenia #ArmenianElections #EU #Disinformation #FactChecking #Censorship #CivilSociety #FreeSpeech

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Transcript

Asbed: 0:04

Hello everyone and welcome to this Conversations on Groong episode. We're 31 days away from the June 7th parliamentary elections in Armenia and we have to ask some hard questions. Is this election going to be decided by Armenians or is it going to be designed by Brussels? Nare Navasardyan and Hovhannes Ishkhanyan join us today to share their experience of what's happening on the ground. Nare is a writer, documentary filmmaker, journalist, and activist based in Yerevan. And Hovhannes is a writer, documentary filmmaker, publicist, journalist, and co-founder of Akn Und Akan.

Hovik: 0:40

Thank you for joining everyone. Please comment, like, share, and make sure you're subscribed to help us out. And on to the show.

Asbed: 0:52

Welcome back to the Groong Podcast. Thank you.

Nare: 0:56

Thanks for having us.

Hovik: 0:58

Welcome both. Nare, Hovhannes, it's good to see you again on our podcast. And I think you each have been on the podcast for at least one episode. But for those that don't know about you, can you reintroduce yourself a little bit?

Nare: 1:12

Okay. So my name is Nare Navasardyan. I'm a writer. also co-founder of Akn Und Akan NGO with Hovhannes we founded it together after the 2020 war because we wanted you know the art that is being made in Armenia to address the problems of Armenia that's the main purpose of Akn Und Akan to just unite artists of all sorts around the national goals of Armenia now I'm working on my book and also I'm gonna co-direct a play that's called Enemy of the People by Ibsen. I didn't know that.

Hovhannes: 2:03

Well, yeah, my name is Hovhannes Ishkhanyan. I am a writer, film director, documentary filmmaker and We just finished one film that will be premiered in May 15, which is about this The talks about that Azerbaijanis are going to come and live in Armenia. And we go through families which have been displaced more than once in their life. So once it was in the 80s from Azerbaijan, Soviet Azerbaijan, and now from Artsakh. and the film and the core director the other director is a student who is researching this theme and by his travel we open the film so yeah that we will premiere this film soon and I decided to include this into my biography while

Hovik: 3:08

talking to you very good that definitely if you have any information about the film Feel free to provide it to us, we'll put it in the show notes so that people can look it up. The 8th European Political Community Summit happened in Armenia this week, followed by the Armenia European Union Summit. and we have seen literally hundreds of press releases clips of Eurocrats from all different poses and angles and the lavish praise they heaped on Pashinyan and by Eurocrat I also mean natocrat and also I guess the outlier is Canada I don't know what they're doing in Armenia but and the opposition the opposition was forcefully prevented from demonstrating or protesting anywhere near the events. The Eurocrats were kept hermetically sealed in their areas where the Armenian government wanted them to be. You were among the protesters, I'm sure Nare was as well. Can you describe your experience? I believe you were arrested and you were trying to send a message to Emmanuel Macron. Tell us what you want to say now on air.

Hovhannes: 4:39

Yeah, it was on May 3rd when Macron arrived and he was walking in the streets. We were near him and we were also walking and the police just approached us, surrounded us. It was me and Haik Douruns. I can't remember from the church that the security of Pashinyan closed his mouth and took him away and also we together re-edited the censorship of the liturgy that they erased the name of Catholicos while doing the liturgy. Me and Tyk were there walking in Abovyan Street and they surrounded and said get out of here and we said why should we get out of here and they said you're not going you're not going we said why should we And they just grabbed our hands and took us to their car, took to the suburbs of Yerevan and just let us go. So we understand this was illegal, done illegally. So the other day there was the protest near Hamalir and six parties, it was organized by six parties by Artsakh people and there were the parents of the soldiers that are Lost Unknown, yeah? Is it the right way to say? And who else? And the civil society was there, etc. So we were giving speeches, doing actions, but it was like we were taken out downstairs. so it was done perfectly so no one from these Eurocrats could not see us and and that was I think it was a disadvantage because I think we had to like approach to them and say what we want to say next day I went on May 5th in the morning I went to Emmanuel Macron to the hotel And I said, just a few words, I said, j'accuse Monsieur Macron, quoting Émile Zola, his famous article for the protection of officer Dreyfus. I said, j'accuse Monsieur Macron, you must not support someone who's violating constitution. You must not support a person who's committing genocide to its own people. And really, this is abnormal. Europe is here for democracy, for human rights, etc. But for the Civil Contract in their election program, it stated that if they come to power, they promise to violate Constitution by overthrowing Catholicos, which is a violation of 17th Article of Constitution. And it's violation of also the Convention of Human Rights, ninth article. It is violation of the religious organizations and the freedom of conscious law of Armenia, 17th article. We can go around, you know, this is the violation of Criminal Code and 206 or 209. I don't exactly will now remember the article, but yeah. But anyway, so we know that Pashinyan has violated the constitution before by handing Artsakh or handing territories from Tavush region or interfering to the life of the religious organization. I mean the Apostolic Church and we also know that Artsakh was a territory of prospering democracy. It was a 12k square meters where we were like developing democracy. We were changing presidents. Artsakh had five presidents. We had the independent branches of power and in parliament there were all kind of parties. Instead, Azerbaijan is a country where For 30 years one family is ruling, there is no opposition, journalists are in jail, the national minorities, the leaders are being killed in the jails. And so this is like the paradox that Europe, which is like trying to spread democracy, they were the patron of Pashinyan who gave this democracy, prospering democracy, lend to dictatorship. And now they are like continuing to to back this creature who's like who destroyed land of democracy on the earth. So this was this is the abnormality of Europe. I think Armenians should save the Europe because, you know, like the hostages we have in Baku, they are not there just because of just because of Armenian issue, but they are there because of democracy as well. Because they were the ones who were creating democracy. And now in our jails in Azerbaijan, democracy is in the prison. So this is why Armenians should save Europe from this ignorant people who just destroyed all types of values of Europe. And we understand that Macron is a living president. After a year, he will not be there. So we should get very lucky.

Asbed: 10:30

There will be French presidential elections in 2027. In 2021, there was a strategic agenda between Armenia and the EU, which mentioned explicitly a bilateral commitment to transparent, inclusive, free and fair elections. Are we seeing anything like that, Nare? It seems to me that the EPC is essentially Europe talking to the current ruling party at Pashinyan. Where is the discussion with the opposition?

Hovik: 11:01

Asbed, that strategic agenda document also included a reference to working with the opposition. So, you know, free and fair elections imply working with all sides. That's right.

Asbed: 11:14

That's right.

Hovik: 11:15

But there was explicit mention of the opposition constructively working with the opposition.

Nare: 11:20

I think that any illusions that some of the representatives of certain parties like Sasna Tsrer, the illusions that they spread about Pashinyan being either playing both sides or balancing or, you know, just being Russia's man or any of this has been completely rejected. All these illusions have just disappeared because Vance came to Armenia and gave his full support to Pashinyan and now we see the EU doing this exact same thing. So, for example, their rapid response group that they started in Armenia, the Hybrid Rapid Response Team. It has a mandate to advise the office of the Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan. And separately, they also included this 12 million EU package to counter disinformation ahead of the elections. And we see that it's actually the actors that are supposed to be countering disinformation. They themselves are spreading lies and misinformation. So the question arises like who is going to keep this fact checkers in check, because, for example, Article 3 is an NGO and they spread. They created this video where they claims that if you don't go and don't vote for peace, which is a code word for Pashinyan. then you're going to be sent be in this Union State with Russia and be sent to Donbas to fight both of these claims are just completely unfounded and yet they will not hesitate to just spread this and none of the fact checkers in the group react to this to this lie they only target the opposition they target You know, Russia, they will even go as far as to fact check a program, something someone said in one of the Russian programs, they will go after that. And yet they don't see any of the propaganda disinformation that Pashinyan's party is spreading. And some of it is very dangerous propaganda. For example, the idea that there is no threat from Turkey and Azerbaijan. It's a ruling party line. that is being defended and validated by the EU and its fact-checkers.

Asbed: 13:57

Now that fact-checking business is going to be very interesting, so we want to definitely talk about that. That's going to be one of our topics. I want to come back to the EPC, the European Political Community. I'd like to get your take and Hovhannes also, maybe you can also give us your impression. How has the public received The hundreds of hours of television time that were dedicated to covering this thing was just basically a beauty contest. All these people walking on carpets and going to Matenadaran, going to Gyumri to concerts. Mostly I read about it. I can tell you there were hundreds of articles about this. But how has the common public received it?

Nare: 14:41

I think it is difficult to say how the general public has received it because so much of it has been PR. For example, they did this whole social media campaign where all the reels that were posted had the exact same message and they were posted from the exact same angle of Macron jogging, how in Yerevan you can just accidentally bump into the President Macron, how wonderful it is, etc. And then La Marseillaise, I don't know any single person in Armenia that knows La Marseillaise or even, you know, knowing French is not really so common in Armenia. And yet suddenly he walks, you know, near the Republic Square and the people just spontaneously burst into it. It's a little bit like a melodrama. Yes, it's a show. And it seems to me like the underbelly of the Pashinyan administration, the coercive methods that they are using are not really on display. When you just look at it from this perspective of a foreigner, of like maybe a Russian, a tourist, you see, oh, this country is just all the time in celebrations and they're just validated and hosted and they're hosting all these European leaders. It must be on the right track. But in reality, and I was just recently in Kapan, you see, you talk to Kapansis, they don't know about the EU summit, but they see the Azerbaijan flag right in front of the airport. And they say Pashinyan will not let us get rid of it to secure the airport. So all the high points across the border are taken by Azeris. They want to cut us off from Iran. The realities on the ground are felt by these people that are Now in Syunik, they're in Tavush, they're in Gegharkunik. Maybe you can dilute them for some time, but the material reality will at some point catch up to it. And I don't think it will matter how much fun Macron has in Yerevan.

Asbed: 16:45

Hovhannes, would you say that the effect is mostly in Yerevan or does it also spread to the regions?

Hovhannes: 16:51

I didn't analyze it too much to understand how much it is spread but I would say that it was a controlled spiral effect that was That was multiplying these types of emotions, you know, because like, look, if my emotion was to contradict, to like confront these people, these experiences. ignorant Europeans, I was taken out by the police. So I couldn't give the example to the society at that particular moment and couldn't bring up up the emotions that we have for May 3rd. I could do it for May 4th, but it was a tiny one because already their spiral went so fast and youth were going and crying when Macron was signing a book or something. So this was This was the on the surface these emotions were in the surface and it was growing bigger and bigger and bigger and in Gyumri like it felt and in Gyumri people went to do protests for like our Archbishop but police like take them out from there so we have to also understand this yeah like they didn't let to show show up and that was very disappointing to see like how the The mind of Europe, we say like France, is like having fun when a political prisoner priest is just in 50 meters from him. Yeah, so I would say that it was controlled of emotions. If we could manage, like when we were protesting in Hamalir, if we could bring this energy to the places where these Europeans were walking, I think things would be changed. Because when I'm talking with people, many of them are shocked. Why are they crying when they see Macron? What did Macron do to Armenians? Like, he's the president of France from 2017, yeah? And from 2018, Nikol is here. So during Macron, we, like, lost Artsakh once partially, then all together, and this was patroned by Macron in 2022 in Prague in October 6th. and uh and and we understand that they were like trying to bring to to to the monitor different type of Armenia that doesn't exist and like they try to press the real Armenia that uh that are the problems and the real emotions and this is what they did and they I I would say that uh for they they managed to do it yeah yeah

Hovik: 20:07

not uh um I wanted to ask you, what are the strategic interests behind France's PR support for Pashinyan? Maybe you could talk a little bit more about that.

Nare: 20:20

This was an interesting finding for me, that people in Armenia consider France now an important strategic partner. Edgar Elbakyan and his team did research and it showed that after, I believe, Russia, which would be a rational thing given the integration structures, people think that we are now allied, our closest ally is France. And it seems to be like a manufactured point, a manufactured attack on Armenians and their reality. As we know, France is in a military alliance With Turkey, it's a NATO country and logistically it has no means to ever give Armenia the support that it needs to have a balance of powers with Azerbaijan. So they are using in a very targeted way Missak Manouchian, they're using Charles Aznavour, the French people, you know, even we see Murad Papazyan coming and validating this, even though he himself was banned from visiting Armenia by Pashinyan. We see this campaign of presenting France as a real alternative when this is not really a realistic prospect. So they use France. In reality, I would say that the most important points of the EU summit were the visits of the Turkish representative, the Azeri representatives, because this is what in the end Armenia is going to get. It's going to get an increased influence of Turkey and Azerbaijan. It's not going to gets the increase of the croissants per square meter.

Hovik: 22:12

Yeah, good point. Now, France is one of the I guess leading engines of the EU and this EPC summit was, of course, Macron's own idea. I want to talk about EU now as a larger entity. The EU has brazenly, I would say, is brazenly interfering in the Armenian elections. Now for our discussion and for our show notes, we'll be referencing this document that was prepared by Amsterdam & Partners LLP. They are the legal team that represents Samvel Karapetyan. But they have done a tremendous job and they have come up with a white paper called Interference by Design. And it goes into details on how exactly EU is accomplishing this. Many of the things that we're going to talk about today essentially are influenced by that document or are echoed by that document. So it will be in the show notes. Now the Amsterdam paper talks about essentially just weeks or let's say a month before the elections the EU committed to providing Armenia with 300 million euros. The intent of that is democracy and resilience. Nice words, but the white paper also suggests that it will be a Moldovan-style intervention to prop up the current incumbent. Do you guys know where the EU money is going, will go? What is the purpose of it and will Armenians get to see any of it?

Nare: 23:55

I think everything that they do is to prop up Pashinyan and it's very similar to the Moldovan experience because you know they were really leveraging this threat of like funding withdrawal in Moldova They explicitly warned that if an anti-European government ever comes to power, then Chisinau is going to lose 1.9 billion euros in the EU financial support that they offered. And this has created a significant political leverage for Sandu. So the voting against pro-EU parties in Moldova had its consequences. And this is like on top of them making sure that the Moldovan diaspora in the EU can vote and just doing everything to manufacture the result that they wanted and they succeeded. So I think we see a similar case in Armenia where they really offer money to the party in power to keep them in power and if you look at the economic exports if you look at the economic situation in Armenia you see that Russia has a big chunk of control we get fuel from Russia and Iran and the The rest of the European countries are about 5% or 7% of our exports And it's not really likely to grow because they are very careful about introducing agricultural products from abroad. They protect their farmers and they're not even letting in Ukraine, which is like a candidate country. So where should the Armenian apples go? That remains an open question. So there is this mismatch between If you look at the statistics, you will see that the biggest success story of the recent years is Iraq, because Armenia has really started exporting products to Iraq, and it grew like 90-something percent, just crazy numbers, and also trade with Iran is really growing too. But we don't really see any tangible benefits from the EU. What we see, however, is they are investing in the superstructure, not in the base of the economy, which is they control a lot of the media and they have tight control over it. In parallel, Pashinyan really tries to suppress Any small business owners that would oppose this because effectively by trying to go against the Russian integration structures, he's going against the interests of this small and medium business owners. for example right someone makes lemonade in Vayk and exports to Russia Russia is a big market like where is this lemonade gonna go to Brussels I don't think so so he is going to go against the interests of this large groups and he's using the even the intimidation tactics for example in Vayk if you're like a vegetable shopkeeper if you're seen near the Samvel Karapetyan's office, which is the main opposition candidate, immediately you're going to see fines, inspections, all of these economic consequences of your shop, even if you just try to go the other way. And this is massively underreported. If you go around, if you talk to these shop owners, you can get a grasp of this, but we don't really see this because the media sphere is just so overwhelmed by the Western narratives.

Asbed: 27:56

Hovhannes, the Amsterdam report refers to this European document that's titled Crisis Approach for Armenia. Reportedly, the EU is proposing to deal with the situation in Armenia as a crisis. The report says that the central mechanism of the EU intervention appears to be the securitization of opposition discourse, where legitimate domestic political dissent is reclassified using security vocabulary like hybrid threats, you mentioned that one before, and foreign information manipulation and interference, all these scary big terms that they are using.

Hovik: 28:35

Yeah, and of course, we should mention the document is classified. So it has been leaked or reported in media that that's what it contains, but it's secret.

Asbed: 28:45

I went to the website and I couldn't see it. You have to apparently apply to get access, but it's kind of a classified document. But here's the question, Hovhannes. What's the crisis? Why is the EU treating Armenia's domestic politics as a security threat?

Hovhannes: 29:02

Well, we know it's the crisis. Pashinyan has very low ratings. Pashinyan is is someone who violates constitution, who made Armenia land of political prisoners. And this is a crisis for Europe because the person that they are backing has this type of low ratings that might lose their puppet. And of course, if you look from the eyes of Europe, they are in the crisis. But the real crisis is that a person who had this electricity company is in jail because he he just said that he's going to protect his church we shouldn't forget about it he's there because he said if no one will protect the church we will protect the church in our way and after that Pashinyan went to Facebook said We are going to jail him, blah, blah, blah. So this is the crisis of Europe when someone wants to protect his religious beliefs, he's getting into the jail. And secondly, Europe In the beginning of our talk we were speaking about fabricating the elections fraud I would like to stop for that topic for a moment to see how Civil Contract is doing frauds in the election because now it's different you know Armenians used to know that fraud in elections is on the voting day But now basically it's...

Asbed: 30:53

I think it's over and done by voting day. It's all prearranged.

Hovhannes: 31:03

They do something in the voting day, but what do they do? They just put into the prison people who are the organizers, who are active, and only for one party. They don't check for other parties. They call a member of the parties for interrogation in this in the law enforcement. Also, days ago, a few days ago, we found that in YouTube they do this anti-propaganda against opposition from an Austrian company which is unknown. We could like search and see that they are doing this aggressive PR for Pashinyan, but it's not transparent. We don't know who is that, how they are paid and etc. Also, we have to understand that Armenians cannot vote freely because the fear that they made, like for example, we went Can you say a little more about that? I mean, what is their fear? Why are they afraid of what's going on? So basically the story was this, an Azerbaijani man went to Amasia, made a video, he said this is our lands, we should return here, etc. He approached a policeman, he talked with them, and he published And because we were doing this film about this Azerbaijanis resettlement, so we decided to visit Amasia to see what do people think about this resettlement of Azeris. And when they were learning why we are there, they were all feared to talk. Car was following us, you can see in the film, and we know that we understand it was done by the government to follow us and whoever we were approaching to talk. And even we learned that before a bunch of dozens of journalists went there, medias went there and no one talked. They were afraid of trouble or of talking about Armenian-Turkish relationships. Everyone is in a fear. And we have to understand if we have this type of frightened society, the elections cannot be free. So we have to understand that Europe is helping Pashinyan for the fraud of elections.

Asbed: 34:19

Nare, what would you say is the role of this hybrid rapid response team that the EU has deployed in the office of the Prime Minister?

Nare: 34:30

Well, to your previous point about dressing things up in a beautiful language, I worked as a copywriter for the EU briefly. I'm in part blamed for the proliferation of this vocabulary. We used to even joke about the EU alphabet where you say something and you mean completely different things. And this is just a part of it where Rapid Response Team is just there to advise Pashinyan to coordinate his team, his PR lines, this hybrid warfare, for example, it's like a term that they use. But in reality, they are the ones that are actively interfering. And Russia even if they do have like a few telegram channels and one Sputnik Armenia definitely in the social sphere Western narratives are dominant so I don't really know the particular things that this hybrid rapid response team is but I know that they are going to be advising to the team of the Prime Minister and also regarding this EU language a few years ago I think it was 2015-16 there was a leak of this type of again document about plant clusters of seemingly independent journalists and experts this was like an anonymous leak of this Integrity Initiative that was done by British foreign services foreign military, state-adjacent people, like MI6 and so the program also included this manufacturing a concentrated manufacturing of narrative where things that seem organic are actually not and then that this rapid response team I think is going to also be a part of this like shaping a narrative and affecting larger choices and in this that they are working just hand in hand in hand with Pashinyan I want to actually

Hovik: 36:37

Let our listeners know that I will link to the investigative reporting about this. It was done by Iain Davis and it goes into a lot of detail on how this network was structured. It utilized UK Public Money and it was run by the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office in partnership with the UK, I believe, Ministry of Defense as well and some other government entities. Unfortunately, what caused a ruckus in the UK was not that this was being used to manipulate foreign media or target Russia. But when they started targeting Jeremy Corbyn, then, you know, all of UK started going crazy. And I mean, at least they tried to remove this program We'll link it in the show notes. It's a six-part, very detailed analysis and I would highly recommend reading. Part six talks about Armenian entities who are participating in this endeavor as well. A lot has been said about EU interference in elections, especially in non-EU countries or what is it called, non-member states, the term that they use. And in this Amsterdam document that we already referred to, Armenia essentially represents the latest application of what they call a toolkit of election adjacent mechanisms. And these are tools that the EU has deployed across Europe, across Eastern Europe, namely Romania and Moldova. In Romania, NGO-driven content moderation and then declassified intelligence led to the unprecedented annulment of the election. We all saw that over the last year after a populist candidate took them all by surprise. And in Moldova, the EU provided a massive growth plan and also rapid response teams, basically the same thing. So they perfected the mechanism each election and Commissioner Marta Kos explicitly stated that Armenia's assistance I believe that includes the 30 million that was provided for the election and the 300 million that is being promised is following the same model and of course we're not even talking about the 12 million or 15 million for the rapid response team project or whatever So, if you will, maybe we can begin with you. Is the Moldovan model of intervention essentially becoming a new standard for EU? And how do you think that will play out in Armenia?

Hovhannes: 39:42

Well, yeah, if we look with the same narrative, the same type of family of people who are doing this, and the nice part is that, you know, that, like, for example, if you are observer, yes, if you are observer of the elections, you cannot do anti-propaganda against anyone, but you can, like, link them to Russia and then start to do anti-propaganda against Russia. So this is how this works, you know, like, and all these NGOs and groups, like, for example, I went to a press conference of one that we mentioned, Article 3, I went to this press conference and I was for one hour I was hearing all this narratives that they were giving about how these hybrid fights are being in Armenia and then talking about that they are trying to make it as if Azerbaijan and Turkey is a threat and they were bringing fact checks. For example, they checked someone in Azeri who was driving a car and there was a news that he was driving a car and saying that he they fact check it and find out that it's not in Armenia. Yeah. And so they were like bringing this example to explain that everything is false that You see that how they are manipulating with the information but we know that Azerbaijan is like destroying the church we know that this Azerbaijan that I talked came to Amasia made a video said I have to come here we know that Turkish Turkish people like come here and do this Grey Wolves fascist signs in Armenia but this is how they usually work you know like trying to keep trying always to put the bet things on Russia and trying to fact check things that can make in a better face Turkey and Azerbaijan. So we'll see. Most probably Civil Contract cannot take out Samvel Karapetyan from the elections as we know it happened in Moldova because I think after the meeting in Russia with Pashinyan, Pashinyan is trying to keep his mouth a little bit Not anti-Russia. Yeah, of course, the others, the NGOs are doing it, but I saw that he went to one of the villages and when the locals were saying, oh, we saw well done what you did with Putin, he was trying to calm them that it was just a diplomatic talks, don't do it. We see that he's changing. He changed his narratives because he needs to win these elections and from This perspective, of course, Russia understands that there is this Russiaphobic government, but we see also that Pashinyan cannot stop the Samvel Karapetyan to take part in the elections, and maybe they counted that population will get outraged and it will be bad.

Hovik: 43:34

I watched that conference because I know later you were trying to say something and they immediately shut off the conference but it was just amazing to see some of the narratives I mean it was all about hybrid war so they were basically saying that any talk about the arrival of 300 000 Azerbaijanis is just fear-based conspiracies Among many other things, they're saying that the opposition is trying to exploit Pashinyan's minor squabble with the church as them trying to strip our identity So I wanted for you to talk a little bit more about that As far as I know, the Aliyev government is directly funding the Western Azerbaijan concept, isn't it?

Nare: 44:25

Yes, definitely. Azerbaijan holds all the cards vis-a-vis the EU, especially given the energy crisis that is now undergoing. And a lot of its recent failures, I think, might just be the symptom of the EU's using leverage. For example, in Romania, right, why were they able to Yes, after about a year, they were able to get this pro-EU consensus kind of government in. But just a few days ago, it collapsed. And the reason is because they have very real economic crisis, like a recession. So in this time, Romania is actually already in the EU. And in these times the EU support for Armenia is almost it's irresponsible and almost accidental because they are not really able to hold it together in their own countries and these are the countries that yes they do have the geography to support like a closer contact with the EU but Armenia doesn't even have this geography to to support this expansion the EU expansion look at the Georgian elections also again as soon as they started pushing for this foreign agent registration law EU immediately started claiming that the election results were fraudulent and even the Prime Minister of Georgia explicitly said that it is the EU ambassador that is like fomenting the protests and called it like a regime change attempt after So I think it is important to realize that we are alone against Aliyev's ambitions, whatever Their Project Is For Armenia And For Now We See Coercion And Control But They Are Now Controlling The Heights Over With Our Connection To Georgia On The Tavush side Is Under Direct Azeri Observation The Zangezur Corridor Which Is Like An Anti-Iran Anti-Armenia Project It's A Political Project Not An Economic One Is To Sever Armenia's Ties With Iran And Establish This Turanic Corridor Like This Whole Zangezur Corridor Project is about that, about getting rid of our southern border. Pashinyan advertises the Syunik airport that is now soon going to be international, but again all the planes they land directly under Azerbaijani military control. So far, we see that Azerbaijan has no intent to stop their ambitions because they have no objective force, no military balance. And indeed, why would they? There is no EU reason why Azerbaijan shouldn't have the whole of southern Armenia. Why Treaty of Alexandropol Should Not Become A Reality And Indeed Their Argument Is Not That Armenia Can Be A Force Politically Strategically In A Sense Militarily Not Like A Big Force But Enough To Defend Its Own Interests which we used to do it's that you can have the same parties even if you're in the Turkish blockade you can still party even though you will have little sovereignty or independence but you can still hold host Macron right you can still do all these things even if you have like a Turkish overlords they're not promising us you know glory or sovereignty or any of these things I mean even dignity yes They promised money to Pashinyan for strategic sellouts of Armenia's interests and this has been an ongoing reality and now it is just continuing on. For example, even these people that And there has to be made this distinction also where EU sometimes champions like human centric values at all, while it exports like the worst of it, worst aspects of their system. For example, right now, he will delve more about this. He is dealing with another lawsuit. This is because the director of FIP.am, I believe he's the director or the head, is suing him yet again. for mentioning a simple fact that his organization FIP.am was mentioned in the files of this Integrity Initiative files. This is like a simple fact, but he is not suing Ishkhanyan to obtain results. This is a classic case of like a strategic lawsuit against public participation SLAPP which you know in the EU they have like many directives against it where you have one side where it's like a government backed NGO or a big company against like an independent journalist or an activist that has no backing. So the reason is they want to exhaust your resources to silence you, to make sure that, you know, even writing against them is intimidating, because then you just get into the cycles of lawsuits. It's not surprising that now Hovanez, after he refused to be silenced, he's dealing with yet another lawsuit.

Asbed: 49:58

So speaking of silencing people, Hovhannes, just a little earlier you mentioned fact-checker NGOs, and specifically FIP.am. These guys are accused of systematic bias for the ruling party. Can you tell us a little bit about what these organizations, these NGOs, not just FIP.am, but we'll talk about that also, how they fit in the entire ecology ecosystem of media dissemination in Armenia. Where do they fit? How are they important? Why are they important? And what are the main NGOs in Armenia that are fulfilling this function?

Hovhannes: 50:41

I have to go back when there was a need of fact checkers. I remember when still I was working as a journalist for like countering the huge amount of false news which was shaking the society. I would say there was a place for this type of thing to come out, you know, for checking facts. And it was just the beginning when I was working as a journalist, like I think it was like eight years ago or something.

Hovik: 51:16

Yeah,

Hovhannes: 51:16

and of course I was in favor of this type of project because fighting against false news is a thing that you have to do. But how did this fact checkers develop? So this fact checkers, of course, firstly, we have to understand that the financing was coming from the Europe or from the West. And it started to become like a tool for just checking those facts, which are which are against, let's say, Russia. And if we open this Integrity Initiative leaks story that happened in 2018 and 2019, When UK was secretly recruiting fact checkers and under the name of the independent fact checkers, they had to spread like anti-Russia propaganda and how this anti-Russia propaganda is being done. We know that many news coming from Russia is also true but can be also false, yes? So they just check these false news and they make an impression that everything that is coming from Russia is false. And they check only things that are associated with Russia. But, I have to correct myself, not everything that is connected to Russia is false, because if we go to the documents of these Integrity Initiative, and for the fact checkers the program was called Exposed Network, in the files we can see that there was a regulation that these fact checkers had to Work in a way that society would not find out that they do not work independent, that they are not independent, you know? So this means like you can take like 1% of fact checking in favor of Russia and like 99% of against Russia. And if someone says, but you're checking only things that are against Russia, you can show this one and say, look, we also checked this one. And that's how they are working. And now when this Daniel Ioannisian brought a case lawsuit, sued Anna Hakobyan, we understand that this is the same game, like to show that you're independent, but you're the writing constitution for Nikol Pashinyan. Who are you trying to lie? You know?

Asbed: 54:03

Are there truly independent fact checkers, balanced, fair fact checkers in Armenia?

Hovhannes: 54:11

I hear Nare is saying no. No, I could say, for example, when I'm checking the Hetq.am, I see that they keep the professionalism. And we have to understand that there are layers of unprofessionals. For example, if we look to civil net fact check, they usually Call to the person that they are checking, you know? This is a basic ABC of journalism. If you write about someone, you have to take a comment. But for FIP.am, FIP.am is something that doesn't fit in the frames of journalism. And you know that we launched, how do we say, Fact-Checkers Checking Program, Aya Nare and other fellows of us. So now we are checking the facts that are providing these fact checkers. And we found out that FIP.am made a report on one of the scientists, Armen Manvelyan, who is also a professional of energetics. And he said that in the world, there are no American, this modular... small modular reactors. Yeah, small modular reactors. Thanks for helping me. And he said that in the world there is no American that is operating small. And they fact-checked him and they said he's wrong. There are places where it operates, but they were wrong. Armen Manvelyan was right. And they put a logo on that image and they made a graphic and put a logo of Mer Dzevov movement that that Armen Manvelyan has no connections to Mer Dzevov but Mer Dzevov is like associated as a Russian movement so kind of they are labeling the scientists to be associated with Russia and when we wrote about this and we asked them like we showed them and I went to the press conference to bring this story and ask if they are going to like Correct themselves, but they just ran away from the press conference. They didn't listen to my questions. And you know, in fact, this FIP.am is a member of IFCN, which is the International Fact-Checking Network, and they have a regulation of the policy of self-correction. And it's written in their regulation that our members have this. And I wrote to IFCN to find out if they are going to do something with the FIP.am because we also talked to Armen Manvelyan and of course he is also disappointed that they introduced him as Mer Dzevov and they changed his words and corrected him wrongly.

Asbed: 57:25

Nare, I'm very interested in hearing what your thoughts are.

Nare: 57:30

So we just went on FIP.am website and we looked at their last 20 something posts that were labeled as wrong or almost wrong or like just complete misinformation or mostly misinformation and turns out that about 50% they fact check the opposition about 24 25% they fact check Russia and 14% they fact-checked Civil Contract but you know to make up for it 10% was protecting Civil Contract and 5% was just international kind of like harmless so you see the kind of news stories that are of interest to FIP.am they just are interested in validating the points of view of their employers which our company that we just opened a fact check Fact-Checkers is open for grants and viewpoint. So if you want a certain viewpoint propagation can just finance us and we will propagate your viewpoint and we will do the fact check in favor of your political viewpoints in Armenia. Call us.

Hovik: 58:41

Well, Jokes aside, we will also link to your Facebook page. I think you guys are doing a great job. Sadly, it's up to individuals and volunteers to do this work. But I do want to add that for this episode, I actually consulted two different experts in the field of nuclear power plants. One of them is a nuclear industry expert and a nuclear engineer, and I asked them about US SMRs, and I'm going to quote them exactly. They said, Armen Manvelyan's statement that American small modular nuclear power plants are not being operated anywhere in the world is 100% correct. The other expert that I consulted is in the business development, and they also said there are no US SMRs currently in operation. Now, if you give any text, I mean, God knows I was thinking about this the other aspect. We have like 500 hours at least of discussion among us. I mean, if you feed that, all you need to do is feed that to AI and it'll find like one mistake we said somewhere like five years ago or three years ago. So it is possible to find mistakes. And of course, maybe Manvelyan said some other things that were not correct. But the fact that that specific statement they found issue with it's like you can just Google it and you will know that it's false and they refuse to correct it to me it means nothing but bias and prejudice and but but not I want to actually go back to you and say what are your thoughts are there Official fact checking organizations that do have all the nice Facebook tools that can have immediate feed into these networks that can ban content or that can the result of their work is content that is being downgraded or banned. Are there any such organizations in Armenia that you would trust?

Nare: 1:00:45

Well, the way that content gets flagged is through a U.S.-EU kind of public-private cooperation system. And recently, I believe the U.S. Congress released a paper on how the EU held talks with, you know, Meta, all this like tech CEOs in trying to get their viewpoints across. And in Romania, too, for example, they wanted to ban all the content that was associated with the candidate they didn't like, Călin Georgescu. And so now we see this happening in Armenia. The meta-official collaborator is CivilNet. In CivilNet, has this sneaky line of trying to make the public disengaged from the political processes, claiming that, you know, Nikol is bad, but the rest is worse. It's like a very vile kind of narrative that they're bringing. promoting. And again, they try to create this appearance, but you just need to look at who their partners are, what the grant systems are. It is not even as important like what they actually are doing as who their partners are, where their financing is coming from. As for, I think that in general, I'm biased, but it seems to me that everything that the opposition Namely, you know, ARF, ARF Associated People have been claiming about Pashinyan's government since 2018 was true. We were right about the giveaway of Artsakh. We were right about like the giveaway of heights in Tavush region. Like we have just consistently been correct at large. Maybe we said it would happen in July, but it happened in August. But the general direction of the country It has been clear and that they want to shut down Metsamor and replace it with experimental non working stuff. Again, as a general point, it's true. Like now they might do it a little bit later, they might. So I just trust the opposition.

Asbed: 1:03:02

Well, so you talked a little bit about Meta and that's a major concern for us because there was an MPG poll just about a week or two weeks ago There was a poll which indicated essentially that 63% of the poll respondents get their information from Facebook, their Facebook streams, their Facebook lives and things like that. So this is a very important source of information for a lot of Armenians. Can you talk to us just a little bit about how fact checking is plugged into these social media platforms and how we can see the effect of media control through that?

Nare: 1:03:45

So basically, the way it happens is Meta outsources the fact checking of the content to in Armenia. I believe their partner is CivilNet. So as soon as they just flag the content, the content, it just gets hidden, its reach gets limited. and this is done regardless of the objective realities it might be you can contest it maybe in a few days you will get you know a response and you will come to the result it will come to the conclusion that it was not actually misinformation and it was truth but at that point you know it's already too late they have the tools to control it and this is why in Armenia It is very bad that Meta is the main platform for political thought and debate. And this is something I think that Pashinyan His political culture has brought in this close association to Facebook. Given some times, instead of posting something on official governmental websites, they would just have a post on Facebook and that's it. So, in order to be informed about the governmental processes, you would just have to have an account. So I think I would encourage everyone, all the experts to try to kind of like herd us away from this platform. Because if you want to have to or true like organization, that is free of this like surveillance control censorship that is done against, ultimately against our will to decide our own fate according to our material conditions. If we want freedom from Meta, then it's not going to come from Facebook.

Hovik: 1:05:36

In fact, I believe part of this rapid response process is that those signals from the fact checkers are meant to go to Facebook even quicker. I don't know if there's some manual step that they're overriding or they're skipping as part of this rapid response. I don't know the full story, but we'd love to know more if you know how that works. I've also actually contacted Robert Amsterdam's team to see if they would come on and they have researched this as well. But as we near the end, I want to Hovhannes, I want to come to you and I know that you have sent an official complaint to the IFCN, the International Fact Checking Network, about the behavior of FIP, which is a member of IFCN. Can you tell us more about the nature of your complaint? I think you talked a little bit about it and has there been any response to it so far?

Hovhannes: 1:06:42

Well, one of the things that I sent as a complaint, I already told. This is the Armen Manvelyan's case and I just showed them that it needs to be corrected and thanks for your work that you asked for comments as well. And we have now also two comments from United States experts that Armen Manvelyan was right, FIP.am was wrong. And so we, IFCN, as I told, has a regulation of self-correction policy. And after this, FIP.am had to come out and say, We checked it wrong. It's not something that is very hard to do. If you like your profession, journalism, you do it because you want the truth to be there. But that's not the only case. I also showed IFCN that the editor of FIP.am has negative attitudes to one of the semi-political, semi-civil movement, Hayakve. And Manvelyan is a member of Hayakve, by the way. I showed that because in the Facebook comments publicly, she was like mocking and like joking, trolling Hayakve. So with this, I also send them to see that she cannot do the fact check objectively because she has this attitude. Also, one of their workers, fact checker, Nane Manasyan, who was publicly stating anti-Russia comments. Yes, she was making anti-Russia comments. And also, this is a thing that, guys, your fact-checker can't be objective because she already has this inside of her, these attitudes. And by the way, I will just share with good information just during our conversation, like maybe three minutes ago, I had a message that they received the email and they are going to work on this case. So let's see how it will go and probably we will need the support of United States as well because IFCN I think is from Florida yeah to keep to follow up this case it's very important for Armenian journalism to this case to be rightly done yes one

Hovik: 1:09:30

of the things that I think people have to understand is that This government, besides all the selective justice that they do by jailing only opposition members for sometimes even fabricated evidence, they have also been working to, as you say, this SLAPP thing, right, where they have increased the penalty for libel. and they have government you know they have law firms that are associated with the government or friends with the government and they aggressively prosecute it's another word for lawfare I was I think I heard one of the analysts on TV on one of the programs say that essentially if you're a police and you uh commit police brutality if you torture someone or you beat someone up i mean obviously you go there's jail time involved as well but the fine you pay is less than the fine you would pay for slandering or libeling someone because of they they have raised it essentially so astronomically high it maybe like i think four or five fold since um Don't quote me on that, I don't know if it's four or five, but I wanted to ask you what is the nature of the lawsuit against you if you want to provide more details and how are you dealing with it?

Hovhannes: 1:11:08

First, we have to state that the public figures, politicians, have to have much higher tolerance towards comments and everything. And it's not just opinion. We also have a case in European Court against Austria that states that they should have higher tolerance. And for this The Civil and Political Rights Covenant, International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, yes? So, there we also have this stated that politicians should have higher tolerance towards comments against him or her. But why this guy, Daniel, sued me? Because the first time it was in 2022, I think, because I brought this Integrity Initiative leaks to Armenian public. I think it made And then they decided to sue me, but my position was that these guys damaged the independence of the judiciary system. They supported Pashinyan to seize the courts, the constitutional court, to fabricate cases against those judges who were who were not acting in the favor of Pashinyan. So I remember I brought all the points that they have done by supporting and I told that this case doesn't exist because you cannot go to place to fight for in the court if you're against the independence of this court. You know, this is a paradox. Anyway, I didn't go to the hearings and etc. But now, but after that, of course, I was continuing to introduce people that guys you shouldn't like you you have to be suspicious whatever they give because we have these leaks and according to these leaks there is a problem with this organizations and they decided to sue me again my position is going to be the same but this time I will go to the court and I will Give my position to the court because I want the court also to be the part of this philosophical position that the court is not just an instrument of, you know,

Asbed: 1:13:53

of government harassment.

Hovhannes: 1:13:55

Yeah, but there is a history why the courts are created. And if these guys do not respect the court, why they are going to the court? So this is going to be the same. I'm not going to go into the details of the lawsuit because the lawsuit doesn't exist for me.

Asbed: 1:14:20

Yeah. That made me think of that fellow who's being prosecuted in Gyumri for having called the police chief over there an idiot. Or a clown.

Hovhannes: 1:14:30

Or let's not forget about Samvel Vardanyan. You remember Samvel Vardanyan's case when he approached to this Member of Parliament from a Civil Contract and made comments about his work, how they work, and then he was beaten and humiliated by the police, if you remember. Thank you for joining us.

Hovik: 1:14:56

This was a very interesting conversation. I hope you will be back again soon.

Hovhannes: 1:15:08

Thanks. If you invite us. Oh, no, please.

Hovik: 1:15:14

We will definitely have the invite. I was just saying, oh, no, too. Nikol has killed a lot of things for me. Songs, artists, but anyway. Emojis. All right. Well, have a great day. Thank you for joining us.

Hovhannes: 1:15:35

Thank you, everyone. Thank you very much. Bye.

Asbed: 1:15:39

That's our show recorded on May 7, 2026. We've been talking with Nare Navasardyan. She's a writer, documentary filmmaker, journalist based in Yerevan. She has served as a correspondent for Hairenik Media and has appeared as a commentator on many international news outlets. She co-founded Eye for an Eye (Akn Und Akan). That's an NGO and is currently working on a book, Manufactured Defeat, A Material History of Post-2018 Armenia. The other person, of course, was Hovhannes Ishkhanyan. He's a writer, documentary filmmaker, publicist, co-founder of Akn Und Akan. Hovhannes has a master's in journalism from the Georgian Institute of Public Affairs. For more information, you can go to our show notes. Everything is linked from there, podcasts.groong.org/543.

Hovik: 1:16:35

Thank you everyone we hope you enjoyed this and please consider sharing liking and commenting and also of course subscribe to help us out a little bit and if you're generous enough then consider going to podcasts.groong.org slash donate and also supporting us monetarily this is Hovik Manucharyan and I'm Asbed Bedrossian we'll

Asbed: 1:16:59

talk to you soon bye bye