When “Diplomacy” Becomes a Vehicle for Information Manipulation

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The role of the European Union in Armenia’s post-war recovery is incontestable: from the deployment of the European Union Monitoring Mission (EUMA) along Armenia’s borders, to support for democratic resilience, strengthening civil society and independent media, to the EU-Armenia Strategic Agenda to the millions of euros provided for humanitarian support in the wake of the ethnic cleansing of the Armenian population of Nagorno-Karabakh, to the establishment of EUPM Armenia, whose mission includes assisting state institutions defend against cyberattacks, counter foreign information manipulation and interference (FIMI) and hybrid threats,

Yes, the EU is investing heavily in Armenia, and it has been an important strategic pillar of Armenia’s efforts to build resilience. It has also been the leading international actor in supporting Armenia confront misinformation, foreign interference (FIMI) and cognitive warfare. And that is why something is amiss when one of its senior diplomats, incomprehensibly, lends legitimacy to a narrative being advanced by an authoritarian regime.

Magdalena Grono, the European Union Special Representative for the South Caucasus and the crisis in Georgia, joined a well-orchestrated charade in the form of an Azerbaijani government-organized tour of Nagorno-Karabakh and watched historical revision presented as fact in real time, and then reduced the dispute to competing “views and narratives.” 

By the very standards espoused by the European Union, its own Special Representative engaged in an unmitigated act of spreading “foreign information manipulation,” and by extension, became an unwilling (to give her the benefit of the doubt) instrument for a dictatorship’s hybrid attacks against a vulnerable democracy. Whether this was diplomatic caution, an effort to maintain access to Baku, or simply a failure to question what she was being shown, the effect ended up being the same: a carefully constructed Azerbaijani narrative was given an international platform without being meaningfully challenged.

Everyone by now has seen or read how Hikmet Hajiyev presented the ancient Armenian churches of Gandzasar and Dadivank as part of the “ancient Albanian Christian heritage” during that tour which included, according to Azerbaijani press, 150 representatives of 58 countries. Hajiyev is President Ilham Aliyev’s foreign policy adviser and head of the Foreign Policy Affairs Department of the Presidential Administration. When he speaks on matters like this, he speaks for Aliyev. And his objective was clear: engage in egregious historical revisionism to obliterate or obfuscate the Armenian presence and the deeply rich Armenian heritage of Artsakh. This is an unequivocal act of identicide—the deliberate annihilation of a group’s identity through the systematic destruction of places, symbols, objects, and other cultural property with the intent to erase the cultural narrative and memory of that people. The question must be asked: why is the EU’s Special Representative to the region proliferating the language of identicide? 

Even as Yerevan and Baku speak of peace, and gunshots across the border have stopped, no one should really be surprised by Hajiyev’s behavior. In this particular instance, he was the vehicle through which narratives and historical claims are being reproduced. As we have published many times on this platform, for a regime whose political identity was built around the conflict with Armenia, peace is problematic. It seems that giving up one’s enemy is not that simple.

What is surprising is how Magdalena Grono described her visit and Baku’s claims. On X, she wrote: “Deeply diverging views and narratives persist, for instance on origins of some sites and would need to be addressed between Azerbaijan and Armenia to also overcome this aspect of past conflict as part of their broader reconciliation efforts.”

Was Grono simply being diplomatic or was she trying to accrue diplomatic capital with Baku when she wrote those words? Did it not matter what she ended up doing, when confronted with state-sponsored historical revisionism, was to retreat into both-sidesism and effectively reproduce the very narrative she should have been shutting down? What then, is the value of building resilience against information manipulation and collaborating with the EU on this endeavor, when its own Special Representative undermines these very principles? EU diplomats should finally understand that performative balance can sometimes undermine resilience rather than strengthen it. We have seen and experienced this artificial balancing act for decades.

It was only after coming to Yerevan and being confronted for a clarification, that she said she does not dispute Armenian presence or heritage. Good, but the EU cannot “teach” Armenia how to identify, confront and neutralize information manipulation and then turn around and treat a state-sponsored FIMI operation as simply one side of an equally valid dispute because diplomatic balance requires it.

And that should concern the EU. It’s one thing to practice diplomacy with an authoritarian regime. It is altogether something else to allow the demands of diplomacy to blur the distinction between documented history and state-sponsored revisionism. If the EU is asking Armenia to build resilience against foreign information manipulation, its own representatives should be held to the same standard.

Opinion