Gazeta.ru and Russian Embassy in Yerevan Present Turkish Weapons as American Ones

On July 4, the Defense Army of Nagorno Karabakh issued a statement saying that the Armed Forces of Azerbaijan continue to violate the ceasefire regime and “have also applied TR-107 type multiple rocket fire systems in the southern direction”.

Following the statement issued by the Defense Army of Nagorno Karabakh, Russian Gazeta.ru published a material entitled “Nagorno Karabakh accuses Azerbaijan of using US multiple launch rocket systems”, from where it was republished in Russian media, appearing in “Rossiyskiy Dialog” and “Gosnovosti” websites.

However, NKR Defense Army had not mentioned the country of production in its statement, and making the weapons “American” was Russian media’s initiative.

And TR-107 is not an American weapon… It is the version of Chinese Type-63 107mm 12-tube multiple rocket launcher produced with a license by the Turkish ROKETSTAN company. It is also called TR-107 “Anadolu” (translated as “Anatolia”).

Moreover, the Defense Ministry of Azerbaijan made a good use of this disinformation. In particular, using the publication by Russian websites, they issued the following statement, “The military agency has got entangled in its own lies”. Thus, they attributed the Russian disinformation to the Defense Army of Nagorno Karabakh.

Note that the publication of Gazeta.ru was also shared on the official Facebook page of the Embassy of Russian Federation in Armenia, thus further spreading the obviously false information.

We should add that we have already had a publication showing the weapons suppliers to Azerbaijan. It should be reminded that according to the data released by the Stockholm Institute for International Peace in 2015, 85% of the offensive weapons purchased by Azerbaijan during 2010-2014 has been delivered by Russia.