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Facebook user Alen Ghulyan has showed how Azerbaijani hacking groups under the country’s Defense Ministry and media resources covering the events of the Azerbaijani army spread fake news in Armenian groups of Facebook and other social media to stir panic among people.

“The military group Herbi Xeberler Ve Melumatlar, Reyncer13, a member of the hacking group Anti-Armenia Team actively cooperating with it, and armiya.az (ordu.az) website are actively involved in this ‘operation’,” he wrote.

“As you know, Azerbaijani hackers have recently hacked thousands of Armenian accounts to regularly spread disinformation in Armenian social media groups, in particular about the army's combat readiness.

Anush Danielyan is one of those hacked accounts. Experts create Armenian texts which are aimed at stirring panic and have nothing to do with the reality. Afterwards, they are posted on Armenian groups with a large number of users through these and other similar accounts,” the post read.

Naturally, it cases panic and the disinformation spreads rapidly by Armenian users, Alen Ghulyan says, adding it’s hard to convince people that the information was spread by the Azerbaijani side, since the content is in Armenian and the person who shared it does not seem to be a fake user.

“After the first stage of the operation, the Azerbaijani media (such as armiya.az) disseminates the information in Azerbaijani or Russian languages, citing the source of information (in this case Anush Danielyan). This is also intended for the domestic audience to show that the situation in the Armenian army is very bad and so on. Similarly, fake news is spread about "victims", "shootings as a result of interpersonal conflicts", "the confrontation between the Karabakh people and Armenians" and others,” he said.

The user also posted a screenshot of Facebook post by Anush Danielyan alleging 11 civilians and 27 soldiers have been taken to an Artsakh hospital with coronavirus symptoms.

Alen Ghulyan says the speared of the fake news about coronavirus is not accidental, since the coronavirus situation in Azerbaijan is actually more serious.

“They have hundreds of infected people which is not reported. In some areas on the border with Iran, the situation is catastrophic. Intercommunity roads in that area are closed, with subdivisions of internal troops deployed in those regions to ensure public order. Some reports suggest that servicemen of the State Border Service are also among the fatalities and the infected people,” Ghulyan wrote.