A video posted on the social media platform X May 22 features what appears to be a news update from Euronews, claiming Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan has aggressive cancer with two to three years to live. It also purports that Pashinyan assaulted his press secretary’s personal assistant.

Although the video was eventually debunked as AI-generated, it generated 223,000 views.

Fact checkers have determined the fraudulent item, and others like it either targeting Pashinyan’s Civil Contract party or promoting the pro-Russian “Strong Armenia” Alliance, is the handiwork of Kremlin propagandists.

A pivotal parliamentary election is set for June 7, the first scheduled national election since Armenia’s defeat in the Second Karabakh War. The country’s future geopolitical orientation is at stake: Pashinyan and Civil Contract intend to keep pursuing closer ties with the United States and European Union; Strong Armenia, along with other opposition factions, vows to maintain Yerevan’s historically close ties to Russia.

Russia’s failure to fulfill treaty obligations to come to Armenia’s defense during the Second Karabakh War is a major reason why Pashinyan is trying to steer the country on a westward course. Even so, Moscow is resorting to all sorts of measures as it struggles to maintain its hold over Yerevan, ranging from disinformation campaigns to import bans on Armenian goods. Moscow is running a playbook previously used elsewhere, including Moldova and Georgia.

“It creates doubt and uncertainty. Those are the two things you don’t want in an election,” said Stephen Nix, senior director for Eurasia at the International Republican Institute (IRI). “But again, you just don’t know what these outside influences will attempt to do between now and June 7.”

Russia has devoted lots of time and resources to mounting a wide-ranging disinformation campaign. Various social media pages posing as news outlets have emerged in support of the Russian-Armenian tycoon Samvel Karapetyan, the front man for the Strong Armenia Alliance. A May report from NewsGuard, a nonpartisan information reliability organization, tracked 31 fake news, pro-Kremlin reports in just one week, bolstering the main opposition candidate. False Russian claims targeting Armenia have generated 45 million views across 11 social media platforms and in eight languages between April and November 2025, according to a separate NewsGuard report.

Armenia has been targeted by Russia’s Storm-1516 – its most impactful information operation – more times than any other country between April 2025 and April 2026, according to the Institute for Strategic Dialogue.

The British government has described Storm-1516 as a “a malign influence network which produces content that seeks to undermine European unity and create support for Russia’s illegal war in Ukraine.”

Armenia also ranks third, behind Ukraine and France, in targets by Operation Overload, a Russian-aligned information operation also known as Matryoshka or Storm-1679. More reports have since emerged showing ties between Karapetyan and the Kremlin.

Pashinyan’s government has responded with voter education videos on traditional and social media. It has also arrested people connected with pro-Russian opposition movements on suspicion of election bribery. In May, officials detained opposition politician Andranik Tevanyan on suspicion of engaging in espionage on behalf of Russia.

“People need good communication by government, by local bodies and so on,” said Gegham Vardanyan, editor-in-chief of media.am, a nonprofit newsroom tracking digital misinformation. “You cannot say that all this disinformation, misinformation flows are not affecting people. They are.”

At the behest of the Armenian Foreign Ministry, a team of EU experts are in Yerevan on a mission to assist Armenia in combatting cyberthreats ahead of elections.

“There are so many parallels with the Moldova case,” Nix said. “What we saw in Moldova was Russian money, Russian misinformation, and Russian cyber-attacks. And so we anticipated Russia would use the same playbook in Armenia, even though they failed in Moldova.”

The Armenian Foreign Ministry and the EU delegation to Armenia did not immediately respond to interview requests.

A May IRI opinion poll showed Pashinyan’s party leading with 32 percent support, while all its competitors were struggling to clear the electoral threshold needed to gain seats in the next parliament. But roughly 23 percent of voters in the same poll remain undecided, meaning that Russian disinformation can still exert influence over the vote’s outcome.

A lot of the disinformation draws on real fears and polarizing narratives about the loss of Nagorno-Karabakh, and future relations with Azerbaijan and Turkey. Sossi Tatikyan, director of the Yerevan Center of Foreign and Security Policy, described opposition and Kremlin-backed talking points as echoing Azerbaijani narratives. Relying on such tactics could backfire, Tatikyan suggested.

“The tactics of the opposition are so explicitly manipulative that I would be surprised if they are efficient,” she said.

Pashinyan critics have tried to frame the government’s actions against bribery and disinformation as democratic backsliding. Responding to such claims, Tatikyan noted Armenia is not a perfect, characterizing the political system as "hybrid democracy." However, many controversies related to democratization in Armenia can be linked to the use of hybrid and cognitive warfare tactics.

“What is happening is that undemocratic, illiberal political forces are trying to imitate democratic methods for their political campaigns,” Tatikyan said.

[This story has been updated to clarify Tatikyan's comments].