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In a July 28 article, the Azerbaijani propaganda outlet Haqqin.az claimed that the European Commission website published and then quickly removed a press release criticizing the policies of Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan.
The media outlet coordinated by the Baku propaganda machine attached an image as evidence, claiming that it was a screenshot from the European Commission website.
The Fact Investigation Platform used special tools to examine the screenshot and the claims of the media outlet and found that the press release published on the Azerbaijani website is fake.
At the same time, Fip.am sent an inquiry to the Delegation of the European Union to Armenia to find out whether such a press release had been published. However, the EU Delegation to Armenia denied the information, stating: “No such article has been published on the European Commission website.”
What does the fake press release cited by Haqqin.az say?
Thus, according to Haqqin.az, the European Commission allegedly published and then removed a statement criticizing Pashinyan on July 25.
It is noteworthy that despite mentioning July 25 as the date of publication of the “removed” press release, the Azerbaijani outlet only referred to it three days later, on July 28.
The fake screenshot by Haqqin.az
In it, Pashinyan’s foreign and domestic policies are allegedly severely criticized, using diplomatic language that is clearly not typical of the EU. It is even claimed in the article that “the European Union is considering alternative representatives for cooperation with Armenia.” According to Haqqin.az, the EU is considering the candidacy of Tigran Khzmalyan, the chairman of the European Party of Armenia and an advocate of the country’s EU membership.
What do search tools show?
FIP.am studied the official press releases published on the European Commission website and other EU resources, and found that the last available press release referring to Armenia was published on July 14. It refers to the joint statement adopted after the trilateral meeting between Pashinyan, European Council President Antonio Costa, and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, which was also published on the official website of the Prime Minister of Armenia.
We have also studied the Armenian and international press and have not found any publications regarding the “removed” press release.
FIP.am also conducted an advanced search in the Google search engine (cache:https://ec.europa.eu/ command format) – first, in the system cache, where online content is stored for a while, even if it is changed or deleted, and found no data proving the existence of such a press release. The command Commission proposes to update the strategy to advance the growing partnership between the European Union and Armenia site:ec.europa.eu did not produce any results either.
It should also be noted that there are certain caching limitations for brand new websites or resources blocked by robots.txt.
We also searched using the Wayback Machine, which archives original or modified versions of the content of online resources. Our search showed that this system also did not archive any publication from the commission’s website on July 25, 2025.
Image of Wayback Machine search results
This means that either such a page was never created, or it was created but was removed very shortly after, and the Wayback servers did not have time to record it.
Photoshop signs on the screenshot
Fip.am did an Error Level Analysis on the low-quality photo published by the Azerbaijani outlet, using the FotoForensics.com platform. The tool reveals the parts of the image that have been altered. The changed or inserted text/elements stand out – they are brighter and more emphasized.
Thus, according to the analysis, the title: “Commission proposes to update the strategy…” and especially the phrases “European Union and Armenia” are obviously brighter. The same goes for almost all other parts of the text, for example, the words “Tigran Khzmalyan,” “opposition,” “arrests,” and “Church,” all of which are brighter than the adjacent words.
Another platform, fakeimagedetector.com, also assumes that the photo is fake and edited.
Source: fakeimagedetector.com platform
Thus, the statement attributed to the European Commission in the article titled “The European Commission is looking for a replacement for Pashinyan: Who can take his place?” published on July 28 in the Azerbaijani propaganda outlet Haqqin.az is false. Fip.am has found out through various tools that the alleged press release with similar content attributed to the European Commission and published on the website was photoshopped.
And although we had revealed that the information was false, we nevertheless sent an inquiry to the EU Delegation in Armenia, which also denied the publication of an article with that content on the EC website.
Nane Manasyan
