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The Fact Investigation Platform recently received a package of documents that testify to the coordinated political and informational influence campaigns by Russian actors in European countries, including Armenia.
Apparently, the documents were leaked as a result of hacking, and include documents, correspondence, screenshots, reports, plans, and other materials from the Social Design Agency (SDA), operating under the de facto supervision of Sergei Kiriyenko, Deputy Chief of Staff of the Russian Presidential Administration.
The documents contain schemes of information campaigns already implemented or planned by the agency in Armenia, France, Ukraine, Germany, Moldova, Norway, and other countries, as well as planning materials, reports, and other deliverables.
The tools used include creating doppelgänger websites, spreading fake news, organizing protests on the ground, sabotage activities, and other actions, involving experts and opinion leaders who spread the desired views.
The leaked data contain materials and plans to influence societies in those countries. In European countries, the actions were mainly aimed at generating anger towards migrants, Ukraine, and occasionally Armenia, supporting far-right forces, and spreading other pro-Russian narratives. Significant actions were aimed at discrediting President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Prime Minister of Armenia Nikol Pashinyan, and President of Moldova Maia Sandu.
Many of the activities were false-flag operations. For example, some operations against Armenia were carried out in such a way as to create the impression that they were coordinated from Turkey, while operations against France were carried out under the false flag of Ukraine and the Armenian Revolutionary Federation party, among others. Different people have been involved in the operations in various places, including a retired US General, a former member of the German Bundestag, a Romanian oligarch, etc.
The individuals appearing in the correspondence use pseudonyms, but the names of Sergei Vladlenov Kiriyenko, Deputy Chief of Staff of the Russian Presidential Administration (named SVK), as well as Sofia Avraamovna Zakharova (pseudonym Kristin Killer), who also works in the Presidential Administration, can be easily identified.
The correspondence of those involved clearly shows that they are taking serious measures to cover up their activity and prevent leaks. However, it does not seem to be working well. Moreover, 50 persons associated with the agency have recently appeared on the British sanctions list.
Armenia
The agency has carried out campaigns aimed at discrediting the Armenian government and destabilizing the country’s domestic life. The most well-known campaign to the Armenian public is the so-called operation “Marseille“.
Last year, a newly launched French website reported that Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan had purchased a luxury mansion in Marseille worth several million dollars. Back then FIP.am revealed that the source was unreliable and the information was ungrounded and false. The website that had published the article was later shut down.
In one of the letters to Sofia Zakharova, a person under the pseudonym Edward Bernays reports that “there is success on the Armenian side” and that “the story about the corruption scandal has been taken on by the Armenian media and opinion leaders.”
The correspondence states that it was possible to provoke an internal political confrontation between the government and the opposition, and then suggests that the full report of the “successful operation” be read in the attached materials.
The leaked documents also include a full report listing the Armenian media outlets and social media pages that reposted the fake article. The report shows that 17 agents contributed to the dissemination of the article, it had about 10.6 million views, and the debunking material had about 1.1 million views.
The report documented the generated hate speech through screenshots of Facebook comments.
According to leaked documents, the Russian-language website “Yerevan1” belongs to the agency. The main task of the online resource is forming a negative attitude towards Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan among the Armenian community of Russia.
Several leaked documents make it clear that the resource belongs to that agency (1,2).
This resource regularly publishes articles targeting the Armenian government. For example, the leaked files contain the text of an astrological analysis of Nikol Pashinyan’s political future, which was published on the site in May 2026.
One of the leaked files reveals how many articles should be published on the website on a monthly basis and in what format.
The agency has also developed the “Self-Completing Knowledge Base-Armenia” project targeting Armenia, the goal of which is to create more than 50,000 clone websites on Wikipedia.
They have SEO optimization (Search Engine Optimization), which improves their visibility in search engines, such as Google. Its goal is to make artificial intelligences like ChatGPT tell what is beneficial to the Kremlin when asked questions about politicians.
The agency has launched a so-called “pan-Armenian media platform,” but the leaked files do not specifically name the media outlet.
The description of the media outlet indicates that it targets Armenian communities in the US, Lebanon, Iran, France, and other countries, advocating allied relations with Russia, pointing to “dangers coming from the West,” and targeting the normalization process with Turkey.
The document describes the structure of the website, according to which it should publish news from the Diaspora, specifically cover the activities of the Armenian Apostolic Church, emphasizing the role of the Church in the lives of the people, as well as publish a series about Great Armenians.
Another document describes a different project targeting Armenia. It states that the political figure X should be discredited by spreading defamatory information about them, and an opposition figure who is being “politically persecuted” should be supported.
France
Among the materials studied by FIP.am, perhaps the largest in number were plans and reports about operations carried out in France. These operations are aimed at inciting negative sentiments against migrants and Ukraine in France, spreading religious hatred, as well as increasing tensions in the relations between Armenia and Turkey, and Armenia and Azerbaijan.
For this very purpose, at the end of April last year, the agency planned and implemented an operation called “Day of Remembrance”, within the framework of which individuals posing as ARF members were to distribute leaflets and posters with forget-me-not symbols near the embassies of Turkey and Azerbaijan in Paris. It was planned to carry out the operation on the night of April 23-24 and leave France the next day.
Internet searches showed that such an operation was indeed carried out (at least near the Azerbaijani embassy), but those who carried it out (Serbs by nationality) violated the conditions of the plan and did not leave France. Moreover, they carried out another, much more high-profile operation in September.
Last September, severed pig heads were found near a number of mosques in France, which created significant tension among the Muslim community. As can be seen from the documents studied by FIP.am, the operation was carried out by the same agency.
However, both the report of the agency and the findings published later by law enforcement authorities show that the operation, dubbed “Pig Head,” did not go smoothly; there were some problems with the mosque guards. Moreover, when some of its participants were arrested, they admitted to having distributed forget-me-nots in Paris in April of the same year.
We learn about another operation carried out in France from screenshots of agency emails. The agency planned to find 500 expensive cars in France, place Ukrainian license plates on them, and take two photos of each car. The employees discussed that the fee for very expensive cars (Rolls-Royce, Lamborghini, Ferrari, etc.) would be significantly higher. The goal of the operation was to undermine the public’s desire to support Ukraine by distributing these pictures on French social networks.
Another action aimed at inciting anti-Muslim sentiment included spraying green paint, associated with Islam, on the entrances to three synagogues, a Jewish restaurant, and other Jewish gathering places. As an indicator of success, it was reported that the incident was covered by leading French and Israeli media outlets. However, later investigation showed that this operation was also carried out by Serbian nationals.
Among the planned but (at least not yet) not implemented actions in France is the operation “General”, during which people who were to present themselves as executors of the order of the foundation of the first lady of Ukraine, Olena Zelenskaya, were to desecrate the statue of Charles de Gaulle, writing “Glory to Ukraine” on it. The participants were to declare that this was a response to the pro-Russian statements of Charles de Gaulle’s grandson.
Among the planned actions was another anti-migrant protest, which involved throwing white and black inflatable sex dolls into the Seine River. The aim of the protest was to incite anti-migrant sentiment. It was supposed to take place after the “pig head” action, but after the arrests of its participants, it was postponed and, apparently, canceled.
More interesting are the 2026 plans relating to France. They include the introduction of accounts on various social media platforms that will automatically (using artificial intelligence) generate content. It is planned to produce and distribute 540 videos during the year.
Germany and Norway
FIP.am has revealed from the documents that disinformation campaigns and political scandals have been planned in Europe.
The leaked documents contain the discussion of the purpose of the information campaign relating to Norway, which is to provoke a political scandal around the Internet Governance Forum (IGF 2025), which was held on June 23-27, 2025, and to discredit Norway as the organizing party.
The Russian information campaign was most extensive in Germany. Here, operations were particularly active during the 2025 parliamentary elections, Bundestag 2025. The documents testify to a large-scale attempt to influence the country’s domestic political life and elections. In particular, before the elections, stickers with the image of Green Party candidate Robert Habeck and the writing “Be Greener” were placed on damaged cars in an attempt to discredit him.
The “Projects 2026” document mentions the “German Self-Completing Knowledge Base” project, which already has more than 200,000 pages. The goal is to promote pro-Russian narratives in search engines through artificial intelligence and SEO optimization. There was also a so-called “Russian Channel” project, within the framework of which it was planned to create about 400 big articles (long reads) and news stories about Germany per month, distributing them on VK, Telegram, Facebook and X.
The screenshot of the letter sent by Sofia Zakharova indicates specific mechanisms for influencing the domestic political life in Germany, using local politicians and the media. In particular, according to the correspondence, an agreement has been reached with Maximilian Krah, a member of the European Parliament from the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, who is presented in this project as a public opinion leader. The distribution of his speeches on social platforms is being discussed in the correspondence.
These documents outline the campaign’s goal of influencing the pre-election phase of the German Bundestag elections in February 2025. Particularly remarkable is the initiative of AfD co-chair Alice Weidel to organize video debates with prominent political figures on the Russian side, such as the official representative of the Foreign Ministry Maria Zakharova.
According to correspondence, retired US Major General Paul Vallely, whom we have mentioned at the end of the article, is actively involved in the operations in Germany.
According to the documents, there was a European project called Middle Europe (Mitteleuropa), the aim of which was to create a political and economic alliance between Austria, Hungary, and Slovakia, weakening the influence of Germany and France in the EU.
In addition, within the framework of this strategy, it was planned to create think tanks that would target European journalists and experts, spreading narratives that membership in the EU harms national interests.
Ukraine
The actions against Ukraine are, in some ways, similar to those against Armenia. Sometimes, they are even identical. The most successful of the operations was the spread of a fake news about Zelenskyy buying real estate in the Burj Khalifa tower in the UAE, which, according to the agency’s internal reports, had 86 million views. The operation was called exactly ‘Burj Khalifa’ in the materials.
Another operation against Ukraine is the creation of Telegram channels that are supposed to pose as pro-Ukrainian, but in reality, carefully advance the Russian narratives that Ukraine’s defeat is inevitable. The action plans identify four goals: discrediting the military and political leadership, creating a split between the elites, misleading the population, and demoralizing the armed forces. All goals must be achieved without direct pro-Russian messages, in a disguised manner.
Moldova
In the documents reviewed by FIP.am, the information about Moldova focuses mainly on attempts to discredit Moldovan President Maia Sandu and establish influence in the regional media domain.
In particular, according to sources, coordinated campaigns were carried out against Maya Sandu, within the framework of which so-called investigations into the activities of the Sandu Foundation were used.
The documents discussed ideas to use Romanian activist Sebastian Ghiță to claim that Sandu’s administration had tried to block the spread of negative news about him on Romania TV in exchange for 150,000 euros. Note that Sebastian Ghiță is a former Romanian MP, media owner, and the founder of “Romania TV”.
The documents reveal that Maya Sandu is mentioned as one of the main targets on the SNG.TODAY (also SNG{.}FM) website, which, according to sources, is owned by the Social Design Agency (SDA) and sponsored by the Kremlin and Maria Zakharova.
Thus, Moldova is considered an active zone of information warfare, where the main goal has been to discredit the pro-European government.
American general – a pro-Russian opinion maker
Retired American General Paul E. Vallely was part of a coordinated Russian disinformation campaign. The propaganda thesis he was tasked with spreading was: “NATO is losing, Russia is winning”. He is the founder of the Stand Up U.S. Foundation, on whose behalf a letter is being distributed to the media, and Israeli media outlets have expressed their willingness to provide a platform for Vallely’s experts.
Thus, according to the source, Paul Vallely is used as an influential figure to spread narratives about Russia’s victory and NATO’s failure in the Western and Israeli media. According to the letter by Sofia Zakharova, issues related to the payment are being discussed and some actions are being taken through the retired general himself.
Obfuscation, organization of activities and internal accountability
Many of the documents refer to information security, internal controls, and financial accountability within the agency.
Striking evidence of financial accountability are the cost estimates for establishing various “research” centers in Israel and Egypt. For example, the costs of such a center in Israel were estimated at 1.5 million rubles per month for running costs and another 3 million rubles for content distribution and influencer remuneration. The activities of the Anti-Globalism Institute in Egypt are estimated at 5 million rubles per month.
Although the materials contain many documents related to obfuscation, encryption, and IT security, they were still looking for “traitors” within the team. For example, in June 2025, after a cyber attack, internal investigation was initiated against two employees, Nikita and Ilya. In one of the letters, Sofia Zakharova orders the interrogation of the latter, pointing to doubts that they are working for foreign countries.
The correspondence clearly shows that the employees report to Sofia Zakharova, who goes by the nickname Kristin Killer (they call her Sofia), and who sometimes mentions that she needs to agree certain financial matters with Sergey Kiriyenko (named SVK in the letters).
Summary
The leaked documents indicate that the disinformation campaigns against Armenia that intensified and reached extraordinary proportions more than a year ago, as well as various hybrid attack operations, are part of a grand strategy developed in advance and in much detail, and are coordinated from a single center, the Russian Presidential Administration.
The documents reveal interference in Armenia’s internal political life, use of a hybrid toolkit, media resources, and projects aimed at destabilization, which have a tangible daily impact on Armenia’s information domain and domestic public life.
It is noteworthy that the agency operating under the supervision of Kremlin has used the same set of tools to destabilize the situation and discredit governments in the countries of the European Union and other neighboring regions.
Remarkably, almost all actions are false flag operations, artificially exacerbating issues between countries with complex and problematic relations, and between religious and national groups. In fact, this mechanism creates a false impression that groups with some historical and political issues (Armenians and Turks, Muslims and Jews, right-wing extremists and Muslims, etc.) are resorting to such actions against each other, while, in reality, these operations are planned and implemented by the Russian Presidential Administration.
Hasmik Hambardzumyan
Nane Manasyan
