By Alice Lee | Published on June 4, 2026

One of Russia’s most intensive influence campaigns targeting a foreign government relies to a considerable degree on a little-known Turkish citizen named Okay Deprem. Approximately 40 percent of the false claims spread by a Russian influence operation aimed at Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan ahead of the country’s June 7, 2026, parliamentary elections, were originated by Deprem, NewsGuard found.

Deprem, who describes himself as a freelance journalist, apparently moves between Russia, Russian-occupied Ukraine, and Turkey. He produced 17 of the 43 claims aimed at discrediting Pashinyan ahead of the election being pushed by the Russian influence operation known as Storm-1516, according to a NewsGuard analysis. These include claims that Pashinyan’s government banned abortion, that Pashinyan’s wife was having an affair with a Turkish actor, and that Pashinyan was planning to remove all mention of the “Armenian people” from the country’s constitution.

Other false claims launched by Deprem and then spread by Storm-1516 portray Pashinyan as a “traitor” who capitulates to the demands of hostile neighbors Turkey and Azerbaijan by selling off key Armenian infrastructure to Turkey and building luxury housing for Azerbaijanis on Armenian soil.

In a notable departure from the usual Storm-1516 tactic of creating fake news sites to plant false claims, Deprem’s articles are published by real, mostly Turkish nationalist and pro-Russian sites to plant his claims. This gives them a veneer of legitimacy and helps propel the claims into the broader media ecosystem. (More on this tactic below.)

Deprem, a 45-year-old who says he went into journalism for “humanitarian reasons,” has maintained a low profile outside of his region, and NewsGuard’s findings are the first by a Western outlet to reveal his contributions to Storm-1516’s Armenian campaign.

Deprem did not respond to NewsGuard’s four emailed requests for comment, and NewsGuard could not find a phone number for him. NewsGuard also sought to contact Deprem through outlets that have published his work, but did not receive any responses.

ARMENIA’S DUBIOUS DISTINCTION

Russia has long considered Armenia, a landlocked nation of three million south of Russia and east of Turkey, as within its sphere of influence. Having failed to sway elections in Hungary and Moldova in the past year, Russia is redoubling efforts to oust Pashinyan, who has been steering the former Soviet republic closer to the European Union and the West. Pashinyan, who came to power in 2018 following mass anti-government protests, has formally declared Armenia’s ambition to join the EU and has requested the EU’s help in countering Russian election interference.

Indeed, with crucial parliamentary elections scheduled for June 7, 2026, Armenia has gained the distinction of having overtaken Ukraine as the top target of Storm-1516 influence operations, a NewsGuard analysis found. In the year leading up to the elections, from April 2025 to May 2026, the disinformation campaign spread 43 claims targeting Armenia and Pashinyan, compared to 37 claims against Ukraine in the same time period. Russia also began focusing on the Armenian elections far earlier than it has in past campaigns targeting other countries’ elections, as NewsGuard reported in November 2025.

Russia has reason to be concerned. A recent poll by the U.S.-based think tank the International Republican Institute found that Pashinyan’s Civil Contract party maintains a clear lead ahead of the June 2026 vote. However, the outcome remains uncertain, with 43 percent of respondents either undecided or declining to answer.

“Russia is desperate to prevent Pashinyan from being elected,” Ani Mejlumyan, a Netherlands-based Armenian journalist who reports on disinformation operations in the region, told NewsGuard in a phone interview. “It has a massive network in Armenia … There’s a big fight over undecided voters.”

Deprem appears to be a key contributor of false claims spread by Russia’s operation. Mejlumyan told NewsGuard that she believes Deprem’s role supports a Kremlin strategy that signals a more “complete, sophisticated disinformation operation compared to what we’ve seen in other European countries in recent years.” 

While NewsGuard is not aware of any evidence that the Kremlin has a formal relationship with Deprem, there is a well-documented history of Russia recruiting foreign influencers and commentators as part of its information operations. In 2024, the U.S. Department of Justice alleged that employees of Russian state news outlet RT funneled $10 million through intermediary companies to pay Western influencers to produce viral content about divisive issues to promote “Russian interests.”

THE MAKING OF A KREMLIN PROPAGANDIST

Deprem has written about Russia for at least a decade. In 2018, he published a Turkish-language book titled “Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin: The Leader Who Raised Russia.” According to his biography on the book publisher’s website, Deprem was born in Ankara and studied sociology in Turkey, before specializing in East-West relations in Germany. 

In 2014, when Russia annexed the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea and pro-Russian forces took control of parts of Donetsk and Luhansk in eastern Ukraine, Deprem moved to the region, according to comments he has made during interviews on pro-Russian outlets. Explaining his decision to relocate in a 2022 video interview with pro-Kremlin outlet Diplomat.ru, Deprem said: “Independence and freedom are my character. Therefore, if I deem something necessary — no matter the reason or the circumstances — I am bound, obligated, and determined to see it through.”

According to the site of pro-Kremlin press organization Investigator.Org.Ua, in 2016, Deprem was granted citizenship of the so-called Luhansk People’s Republic, the self-proclaimed state that was established by pro-Russian forces after a referendum that was not recognized internationally. At the time, Deprem said in an interview with nearby Lugansk State Pedagogical University: “I have been working as a journalist and correspondent since the late 90s, I started my activity in a youth magazine. After the beginning of the events on the Maidan [political revolution] in Kiev, I decided to return to the field of journalism for humanitarian and moral reasons.”

Perhaps establishing his usefulness to Russia, Deprem served as an observer at so-called elections in the Russia-backed self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic in 2018, according to the European Platform for Democratic Elections, a Europe-based NGO that aims to expose what it calls “fake election observation.” The election was condemned as illegitimate by Ukraine, the U.S., and the EU, among others.

Deprem’s work has not gone unnoticed by Ukrainian authorities. In 2019, the Ukrainian government sanctioned Deprem for his role in observing the unrecognized elections in the Donbas and for spreading pro-Kremlin propaganda in Turkish media. “He is not a foreign expert but a propagandist presented as a journalist to create the illusion of ‘international support,’” National Resistance Center, part of Ukraine’s Special Operations Forces, said in 2025.

LAUNDERING FALSE CLAIMS

As noted above, in a departure from Storm-1516’s usual pattern of creating bogus websites to plant its stories, nearly all of Deprem’s articles first appeared in actual news outlets — Turkish sites Oda TV, Veryansın TV, and DikGazete. Once seeded, these stories spread to pro-Kremlin X accounts and often to the Pravda network of approximately 280 sites that republish pro-Kremlin content, before being repeated in Armenian, Azerbaijani, Georgian, and Turkish media.

The three Turkish news sites where Deprem’s articles typically appear share an anti-West, anti-Pashinyan, and Turkish nationalist perspective. OdaTV is Turkey’s tenth-most-read news site, according to data from traffic analytics tool Exploding Topics, and is owned by Soner Yalçın, a prominent Turkish journalist. Veryansın TV has a smaller readership and is owned by Ankara-based media company İlkan Medya Reklam Ticaret (in English, “İlkan Media Advertising Trade”). DikGazete, which also has a small readership, does not disclose its ownership, and NewsGuard was unable to determine who owns it.

As noted above, none of the outlets responded to NewsGuard’s requests for comment about the claims in Deprem’s reports. OdaTV abruptly ended a call with NewsGuard after being asked to comment on false claims about Pashinyan on the site, and the other two outlets were not reachable by phone. It is not clear whether Deprem was paid for his articles, or what his sources of income are. 

Deprem has also published two articles containing false claims targeting Pashinyan in Chinese state-owned media outlet CGTN Türk, which also did not respond to NewsGuard’s requests for comment.

TRACING THE SPREAD OF A SMEAR

In June 2025, Deprem wrote an article for OdaTV claiming that Pashinyan’s wife, Anna Hakobyan, spent 101,486.41 euros ($177,715.61) on a four-day hotel stay in Turkey — a claim suggesting corruption of the kind Storm-1516 alleges about Olena Zelenska, wife of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, such as the claim that she spent $1.1 million on Cartier jewelry in September 2023. The narrative of the extravagant hotel stay was repeated on three sites in the Pravda network and gained 3.8 million views on X in five months. 

The claim then appeared on three Armenian-language news sites, 19 Russian-language news sites (most Armenians speak Russian), and 40 Turkish sites. NewsGuard found many of the Turkish sites’ articles contained the same erroneous “а” in the Cyrillic alphabet, instead of the standard Latin alphabet, suggesting the material may have been copied across the seemingly independent outlets. 

Hakobyan — who said she was in Armenia at the time of the alleged hotel stays in Turkey — denied the claim. A supposed hotel invoice for her appears to have been fabricated.

In another example of a false claim going viral, Deprem claimed in a January 2026 article on CGTNTurk.com that Pashinyan gave permission for Armenia’s first-ever LGBTQ parade — a controversial narrative in Armenia’s socially conservative and religious society, where same-sex marriage is illegal. The claim was advanced by pro-Kremlin users on X, where it gained 4.2 million views in four months, as well as on the social media accounts of 11 major news outlets in neighboring Georgia, and in articles on two news sites in Azerbaijan. 

Pashinyan’s press secretary, Nazeli Baghdasaryan, refuted the claims in a Facebook post, and there is no record of any approval of an LGBTQ parade.

IN THE EYE OF THE STORM

Storm-1516 is reportedly an offshoot of Russia’s Internet Research Agency troll farm, which was founded by late Russian warlord Yevgeny Prigozhin. Its usual modus operandi is to plant news articles that create false claims, often on inauthentic “copycat” news sites, which are then amplified by users on X and spread to other platforms. NewsGuard has identified 35 authentic news sites, including the BBC, Politico, and Deutsche Welle, that have been mimicked by Storm-1516 in order to make it appear that the fabricated claims are from legitimate sources. 

One key Storm-1516 operative is John Mark Dougan, a former Florida deputy sheriff and U.S. fugitive who fled to Russia in 2016 and became involved in the Kremlin’s propaganda machine.

The European Union sanctioned Dougan in December 2025 for his participation in pro-Kremlin influence operations to “influence elections, discredit political figures and manipulate public discourse in Western countries.” 

Asked about Deprem and his role in the operation, Dougan replied in a May 28, 2026, Signal message to NewsGuard: “Is that a Chinese spy? I have no idea who you’re talking about.”

AWARDED FOR HIS SERVICE 

Deprem often portrays his work as an honorable vocation and himself as a truth-teller. In the 2022 interview with Diplomat.ru noted above, he said: “I am, first and foremost, a journalist — both by title and by the nature of my work, unequivocally.”

His efforts have earned him some recognition. In 2023, Deprem was given an award from Russian-backed authorities in Luhansk for “a significant personal contribution to communicating the truth about the events in Donbas to the international community,” according to a report in local news site Lugansk 24. He also won an award in 2024 from the Emil Czeczko Foundation, a pro-government Belarusian charity, for his reporting “on the suffering and immense social, humanitarian, and economic devastation experienced by civilians and the local population in the Donbas,” according to the Foundation’s site.

As the Armenian election nears, with Pashinyan persistently leading the polls, Putin’s rhetoric has grown increasingly hostile and ominous. In a May 9, 2026, press conference, Putin warned that Armenia’s turn toward the West poses the same risks as Ukraine’s EU aspirations. “We are currently living through everything that is happening in respect of Ukraine,” Putin said, referring to Armenia, according to a transcript on the Kremlin’s website. “And how did it start? It started with Ukraine’s joining or attempting to join the EU.”

Edited by Madeline Roache, Dina Contini, and Eric Effron