A bipartisan group of US senators have written letters to Meta and Alphabet, Google’s parent company, asking the tech giants to work to ‘counter Russian disinformation’ in the runup to Armenia’s parliamentary elections. The letters thanked the companies for actions to combat similar Russian-backed moves in Moldova’s 2025 election, and said ‘Russia is updating its playbook from Moldova’ to sway Armenia’s election.
The letters published on Monday were written on behalf of the ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Senator Jeanne Shaheen, along with Senator Thom Tillis, and addressed directly to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai.
Over the past year, both Armenia and the EU have repeatedly warned that Russia and other countries are upping their efforts to influence the parliamentary elections scheduled for June. The EU has also said it is sending teams to Armenia to help combat Russian-backed disinformation.
Armenian fact-checkers have also reported an increasing amount of disinformation coming from foreign sources, some traced back to Russia, including content attempting to discredit the current authorities and their policies.
In the letter addressed to Zuckerberg, the senators said ‘elections are pivotal for determining Armenia’s future, as they are likely to determine the outcome of regional peace initiatives and connectivity projects, including the flagship Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity (TRIPP), a key component of peace talks’ between Armenia and Azerbaijan.
Both letters cited findings from the Armenian civil society group the Union of Informed Citizens as saying that Meta and Alphabet platforms are being used to spread ‘manipulative content’ about the election.
In addition, the letter to Zuckerberg noted the same group had documented ‘coordinated inauthentic behaviour reportedly directed by a Russian-Armenian oligarch listed by the first Trump Administration in a statutorily required report to Congress as a “significant senior foreign political figure [or] oligarch in the Russian Federation, as determined by their closeness to the Russian regime” ’.
While the letter did not mention who the individual was by name, it almost certainly was referring to Russian-Armenian tycoon Samvel Karapetyan, who is currently under house arrest for allegedly calling for a coup against Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan’s government and money laundering. Despite his criminal charges and Armenian law preventing him from being eligible for prime minister, Karapetyan’s Strong Armenia party is the strongest competitor of Pashinyan’s Civil Contract party in the upcoming election.
https://oc-media.org/explainer-who-is-samvel-karapetyan-the-russian-armenian-billionaire-whose-empire-is-under-siege/
Indeed, Karapetyan’s name had appeared on the list of key oligarchs along with a number of other Russian-linked businesspeople back in 2018, during President Donald Trump’s first term.
The letters concluded by saying, ‘while the United States must remain impartial in its views about the results of Armenia’s democratic process, we cannot turn a blind eye when we see a foreign power attempt to impose its will on the Armenian people’.
‘If these efforts use platforms based in the jurisdiction of the United States, our responsibility is even greater to mitigate and prevent such efforts’.
The letters then ‘urged’ both Meta and Alphabet to ‘help ensure that Armenia’s elections remain free and fair’.
Arshaluys Barseghyan
