And it seems that even Yerevan TV channels are diligently “reposting” something that has emerged in the external information space and seems to be pouring balm on the soul and ears of their audience.
However, today, on the 26th day of the protest, it is already clear: Armenia’s tears never reaped the expected “information dividends” from the international journalist community. And not only from the journalist community, by the way. Yes, there were lots of “links” and “reposts”. But this is, second- or third-tier media at best and known bought lobbyists such as Lindsey Snell. Truly reputable and unbiased media, unwilling to put their own reputations at risk, simply ignored the Armenian hysterics. The only exception is France, where the official authorities are obviously behind the anti-Azerbaijani campaign. In other countries, however, Armenia can only “boast” of having the support of its paid clientele.
Perhaps amid the Ukrainian war, and recalling the tragedy not only of the siege of Leningrad, but also of the siege of Sarajevo, the picketing on the road to Khankendi did not seem to be worthy of attention to many people at all. But not only that. The Armenian fakes turned out to be too crude and clumsy, so much so that they could be disseminated in the media only with a decent (or rather, shameless) “material interest”. Simply put, for a bribe.
Here are just the most blatant and obvious fakes. First of all, there are no “120,000” Armenians in Khankendi and Aghdara. For the umpteenth time: there were at best 50,000 people living here before the second Karabakh war. After the war not more than 30,000 people were left. These are the figures of specialized agencies of the United Nations. Armenian nationalists have a long tradition of launching fakes of this kind. Suffice it to recall the cries about “a million and a half of Armenians killed during the 1915 genocide”: there simply were not that many ethnic Armenians in Anatolia at the time. Or the recent fake about “80 foreign journalists” allegedly trapped in Khankendi in the last days of the 44-day war, while at most five people were regularly broadcasting from the city.
There is no “blockade” either. Cars with humanitarian cargo freely drive through the protest rally of Azerbaijani environmentalists.
The Armenian side itself derails talks, refusing to accept Azerbaijan’s proposals.
Finally, the residents of Khankendi messed up the story quite a bit themselves with their very bad timing when they posted on social media their New Year’s Eve dinner parties at home and in local restaurants.
And all this comes together to make one big picture: all the cries about the “Christmas blockade”, “suffering families” and so on are nothing more than opportunistic PR, and not the real situation in Khankendi.
This is not just the failure of yet another PR campaign. First, the Armenian side no longer has a monopoly on global public opinion. Second, one can only feed the world media with obvious fakes up to a certain point. And after a series of information failures during the 44-day war, with all the “Syrian mercenaries”, “Turkish F-16s” and “boars in the Araz swamps”, the “information reputation” of the Armenian side is too badly damaged for its words to be taken at face value.
Most importantly, this failure may well be just the beginning of trouble for the Armenian “PR people”. The willingness of their clientele to disseminate blatant fakes will sooner or later catch the interest of anti-corruption activists, and not those from grant-funded NGOs who obediently “look the other way”, but from the police and investigative agencies. The ongoing corruption scandal in the European Parliament gives plenty of food for thought here. Admittedly, it is about Qatar, not Armenia, but it is Armenian lobbyists who feature most heavily in the scandal.
The biggest problems are yet to come.
