Hayk Hovhannisyan, #CivilNetCheck
Since February 2025, claims have been widely circulated in the media and social networks asserting that Western pharmaceutical companies are operating “secret biolabs” in Armenia, allegedly conducting dangerous virus and drug tests on Armenians.
A CivilNet investigation has uncovered a coordinated two-phase disinformation campaign built on fabricated documents and “leaks,” which spread across multiple countries and media platforms.
The American “Secret Biolabs” Fake Story
The campaign began in mid-February when Mynews24.co.uk published an article with sensational claims about American “secret biolab experiments” in Armenia. The site alleged that a former USAID employee had provided “exclusive materials” proving that the US was conducting secret biological experiments in Armenia, with viruses supposedly collected in Turkey, smuggled across the border, and handed to American military personnel.
Investigation revealed that Mynews24.co.uk was created in August 2023 with concealed ownership data. The site primarily publishes pro-Russian conspiracy theories targeting Eastern European and South Caucasian countries.
By late February, the false narrative gained traction when pro-Kremlin ANNA News and several Telegram channels began circulating “secret documents,” citing the original dubious source. The story quickly proliferated across pro-Russian media outlets like EADaily, “Golos Armenii”, and Sputnik International.
The campaign soon crossed borders, appearing in Turkish media outlets Trhaber and dikGAZETE, which republished the fake documents while claiming they revealed an “epidemic threat” to the region. Azerbaijani channels spread warnings about supposed “biological attacks against Turkey” originating from Armenian territory.
Even Armenian news outlets, including Yerkir.am, News.am, Past.am, and several others, repeated these claims without proper verification. A TV channel even produced a special report repeating the conspiracy theories without investigating the credibility of the sources.
According to research by DFRLab, an international disinformation research center, the fabricated story was disseminated in at least nine languages through a network of websites and social media channels with direct connections to the Kremlin.
Why the Documents Are Fake
The alleged “leaked documents” purporting to show correspondence between ACCU Reference Medical Lab and a US military attaché contain numerous telltale signs of forgery.
Most glaringly, the documents use the nonexistent “usa.am” domain instead of the actual US Embassy domain (am.usembassy.gov). They include misspellings of the military attaché’s name, lack mandatory security classifications for official US documents, and contain basic grammatical errors.
Forensic examination of the PDF files revealed that all documents shared an identical scanned background with text superimposed later—a common technique in digital forgeries. Although ACCU did experience a genuine data breach in late 2023, the fake documents are dated months after this incident, suggesting forgers may have used an authentic leaked document as a template.
The fabrication extended to geographic claims as well. Photos in the “leaked” materials supposedly show locations near the Armenian border where biological samples were hidden. CivilNet verified these coordinates and found they actually pinpoint locations in Turkey’s Trabzon region, 250-350 kilometers from the Armenian-Turkish border.
In response to #CivilNetCheck’s inquiry, Armenia’s Ministry of Health denied the circulating claims, confirming that there are no US-controlled and funded biological laboratories in Armenia.
The Second Phase: Pharmaceutical Conspiracy
By May 2025, the campaign evolved to focus on Western pharmaceutical companies. The Russian “Anti-Injustice Foundation”- an organization whose name mimics the FBI but is reportedly controlled by Russian military intelligence- published an “investigation” claiming that Bayer, STADA, Sanofi, and Servier were testing drugs on vulnerable Armenians to create “super soldiers” for NATO armies.
This false narrative swiftly appeared on LondonTimes.live and Vtforeignpolicy.com– websites designed to mimic legitimate Western news outlets but are connected to a network of Russian propaganda sites.
The Prime Minister’s Press Secretary Nazeli Baghdasaryan denied these claims, and Health Minister Anahit Avanesyan clarified that of the pharmaceutical companies mentioned, only Servier had applied for clinical trial permission between 2018-2025, and those trials had no connection to any “steroids or psychotropic substances.”
The European pharmaceutical company STADA told #CivilNetCheck that the published allegations are unfounded and have already been denied by official Armenian bodies. STADA declined further comment, while the other pharmaceutical companies did not respond to requests for comment.
A Pattern of Disinformation
This campaign in Armenia follows a familiar pattern seen in other post-Soviet states. Similar conspiracy theories about “secret biolabs” were deployed against Georgia in 2018 and Ukraine in 2022. Independent international checks have consistently refuted these allegations.
Armenia does operate modern biological laboratories that were initially built with American financial support under the “Cooperative Threat Reduction” program beginning in 2016. However, these facilities are wholly owned and operated by Armenia, under the control of the Health Ministry, and funded from the state budget. Their purpose is to enhance public health through infectious disease prevention and control.
In 2018, Russian specialists visited these facilities and confirmed they conduct no military activities. In 2021, Armenia and Russia signed a memorandum of understanding on biosecurity issues.
CivilNet’s investigation demonstrates how sophisticated disinformation operations can spread rapidly across borders despite official denials and contrary evidence, presenting an ongoing challenge for media literacy and fact-checking in the South Caucasus region.
In 2022, CivilNet conducted an analysis revealing who was behind the protests organized in Armenia “against US biolabs.”
See also: Russian Biological Weapons Thesis: From Ukraine to Armenia
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