Forged France 24 site spreads nuclear waste disinformation targeting Armenia
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Coordinated disinformation campaign impersonated France 24 and environmental groups to spread false nuclear-waste claims, targeting France-Armenia relations.
Between late June and early July 2025, a disinformation operation seeded a false claim that France's state-owned nuclear company Orano was shipping depleted uranium waste to Armenia for storage in Dilijan National Park. The narrative was published on CourrierFrance24.fr, a typosquatted domain impersonating the legitimate France 24 news outlet, and amplified through a network of inauthentic social-media accounts, impersonated environmental organizations, and coordinated posts targeting French politicians and media. The operation falsely attributed the waste shipment to an Armenian Prime Minister meeting with French officials in February 2025, claimed his wife's foundation received suspicious donations, and suggested Western sanctions on Russia had forced France to seek alternate uranium-storage locations.
The infrastructure supporting the campaign included CourrierFrance24.fr (registered June 16, 2025, in the UK but claiming a Paris address that houses a co-working space), a hijacked greenarmenia.org domain (lost by the legitimate Green Armenia organization in May 2021, then revived in June 2025 with bulk-backdated content), and coordinated amplification by verified X accounts including @KevorkAlmassian (148,000 followers), @EricArchambaul7 (2+ million views on shared video), and @ROYALMRBADNEWS (posting at a rate suggesting automation). French-language replies targeting President Macron, energy and ecology ministers, and Orano used coordinated batches of accounts with Azerbaijani or Turkish names, posted within minutes of each other. The campaign was amplified by Azerbaijani state media (Azertac, Apa.az) and the Environmental Protection First coalition, which framed the false claim as ecological warfare against Azerbaijan.
France 24, Pashinyan's office, and Armenia's environmental ministry all refuted the claim. One Armenian outlet (MediaMax) initially published the false story before issuing a correction acknowledging confusion between the fraudulent and legitimate sources. The operation appears designed to weaken France-Armenia strategic partnership negotiations, stir anti-government sentiment within Armenia, and damage Pashinyan's reputation ahead of 2026 elections. This follows earlier 2025 disinformation campaigns against Armenia falsely alleging biolab hosting and pharmaceutical testing, attributed to Russia-linked operations including R-FBI and Storm-1516.
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Source reporting: https://dfrlab.org/2025/11/11/how-a-forged-france-24-report-fueled-a-radioactive-lie-concerning-france-armenia-relations
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