Kremlin-backed Matryoshka bots attack Armenian PM Pashinyan, falsely accuse him of ignoring genocide, taking strong tranquilizers

The pro-Kremlin bot network “Matryoshka” has targeted Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan. He is being criticized for what bots call “the highest level of corruption in the Middle East” and for allegedly covering up the Armenian genocide. Some bots even claim he is taking “strong tranquilizers.” As the investigator behind the troll-tracking Bot Blocker Project told The Insider, this is the first time Matryoshka has turned its attention on the Armenian prime minister.

The Matryoshka bots have been posting criticism of Pashinyan since June 12. Videos attacking his government have appeared on X and TikTok. Some of them are disguised as reports from major media outlets like Euronews or France 24, while others mimic interviews with university professors from around the world.

Most of the videos reviewed by The Insider focus on the alleged cover-up of the 1915–1923 Armenian genocide by the country’s current leadership. In one such video, Josh Kurek, a professor at Canada’s Mount Allison University, is shown supposedly saying he was shocked by stories from his Armenian students about the history of the genocide being silenced: “For the last seven years, official information sources in Armenia have hardly spoken about the Armenian genocide as one of the most tragic and significant events of the early 20th century,” Kurek says in a voiceover.

In reality, the disinformation network used only the first five seconds of the original video from the university’s social media – the part in which the professor introduces himself. In the original video, published in October 2024, Kurek talks about the concept of a watershed in ecology.