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The Center for Countering Disinformation under the President of Kazakhstan has likewise debunked an anti-Kazakhstan statement attributed to Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, shortly after the latter’s office also denied it as fake news.
On September 7, a statement falsely attributed to the Armenian Prime Minister was circulated on social media.
In particular, a group of social media users claimed that, responding to a remark that Russia was forcing Armenia to hold a referendum on choosing between the Eurasian Economic Union and the European Union, and that he had been summoned to Moscow over the issue, the Armenian Prime Minister had said: “I am not the President of Kazakhstan for them to summon me to Russia. And we are not as rich as the Kazakhs to hold four referendums a year. How can they force us to hold a referendum?”
However, the Armenian Prime Minister did not make such a statement. His office said that the statements were fabricated.
The Center for Countering Disinformation under the President of Kazakhstan likewise confirmed that the statement attributed to Pashinyan had been fabricated.
“Nikol Pashinyan did not say such words. The authors of the fake news changed certain words and supplemented the response with expressions that are absent from the original speech. As a result, the statement had acquired a different meaning and was artificially presented as an act against Kazakhstan. Such manipulations are aimed at creating negative sentiments and artificially creating grounds for tensions between the peoples of Kazakhstan and Armenia,” the Kazakh agency said in a statement.