Shushan Stepanyan
Ani Grigoryan
CivilNetCheck
The pro-government Medianews.site website published a post on April 12 titled “Samo has become the brand face of a hair-dye brand: Ohanyan.” The attached material cites as its source a Facebook post by a user named “Anna Ohanyan,” which comments on Samvel Karapetyan’s video address and his appearance.
The user made this post on April 12 at 18:49, and about 25 minutes later, at 19:14, it was already published on Medianews.site. At the time of writing the article, the post had only six likes on Ohanyan’s page.
This is not the first time posts by this user have appeared on Medianews.site. But who is “Anna Ohanyan,” whose posts are being circulated by a page with a large audience? A simple review shows that the account contains only three photos, which have characteristics typical of artificially generated images.
It turns out “Anna Ohanyan” is not the only one. #CivilNetCheck has found that Medianews.site regularly republishes posts from Facebook accounts that often contain insulting wording aimed at opposition representatives, presenting them as public opinion. At the same time, examination of those accounts shows that their identities cannot be verified and they lack signs of activity typical of real users.
Medianews.site provides no information about its editorial staff. In the media, claims have been made about the site’s possible connections, linking it to Taron Chakhoyan, the deputy chief of staff of the Prime Minister’s Office, but those were based on indirect data. #CivilNetCheck has managed to uncover data indicating a connection between the site and Chakhoyan.
From two likes to MediaNews: Is “Anna Ohanyan” real?
The “Anna Ohanyan” account was created in May 2022. The account states that she was born on July 17, 1993. No person with that first and last name and birth data is found in the voter registry.
At present, the first accessible post on the account is from January 20, 2026, when she posted her profile picture. It was published at night at 00:54, and just a few minutes later, at 01:13, she posted about Aleksan Aleksanyan, a member of the “Strong Armenia” party. This post has only two likes on Facebook, but in the morning at 9:30 it was republished on Medianews.site.
How Medianews.site found this post with only two likes and why it republished it is unknown.
Starting January 20, almost all of “Anna Ohanyan’s” posts were republished on medianews.site, often within minutes or after being posted at night—already by morning. At the same time, the user does not respond to comments on her posts and shows no visible activity.”
What is known about the user “Anna Ohanyan”
The “Anna Ohanyan” account has 368 friends. Among her friends is Taron Chakhoyan. The account contains only three personal photos. Using facial identification tools, #CivilNetCheck tried to find the person depicted in the photos, but no real person was identified. Instead, the results showed images generated by artificial intelligence (AI) with identical or very similar facial features, indicating that this face is characteristic of AI-created images. According to the analytical tools used, these images were most likely created with AI.
Moreover, #CivilNetCheck compared the photos with AI-generated images using Amazon’s face-similarity analysis platform and recorded about 97% similarity, indicating their likely artificial origin.
AI image-generation tools often generate different pictures with the same or very similar facial features, which is why such faces may appear in many images.
The “Anna Ohanyan” account mainly posts political content, mostly criticizing or mocking opposition figures. At the same time, it does not share media content or other users’ posts, except for one post by Taron Chakhoyan about TRIPP.
An American actress’s posts on Medianews pages
Medianews.site also published a post attributed to a Facebook user named “Sasha Simonyan,” criticizing Aleksan Aleksanyan, a member of the “Strong Armenia” party, for being a citizen of the Russian Federation.
“It’s insane: people with Russian passports in their pockets have come to Armenia and want power,” the site says, referring to that user.
The material is circulated with the photo of an account named “Sasha Simonyan.” However, reverse image search shows that the person in the photo is not an Armenian Sasha Simonyan, but American actress Sasha Alexander.
Notably, a Facebook account under the name “Sasha Simonyan” with the same photo cannot currently be found. And the post appears only on Medianews.site and on the Facebook pages linked to it.
Suspicious accounts: coordinated reposting
MediaNews also republishes Facebook posts by users named “Ara Hakobyan” and “Babken Avetisyan.” In both accounts, aside from AI-generated photos, there are no other personal pictures.
The “Ara Hakobyan” account was created in June 2021, but after that no activity was recorded for a long time.
The account became active again only in February 2026, already with an AI-generated image. On March 22, the next post was made about the incident in the metro involving the Prime Minister and an Artsakh woman. Although the post received no engagement, hours later it appeared on MediaNews with the headline “Are there still people who support someone who couldn’t care less about Armenia? Ara Hakobyan”. Here it received a large number of likes and dozens of comments.
At the same time, Medianews.site has other materials that refer to the “Ara Hakobyan” account (1, 2, 3), but such posts are not currently found on his Facebook page. It cannot be ruled out that they were deleted later, or that they were never posted on that account.
The “Ara Hakobyan” account has only 7 friends on Facebook. Among them are Taron Chakhoyan and the “Anna Ohanyan” account discussed above.
No real person was identified with facial identification tools for this face; in this case too, the results mostly show AI-generated images with the same facial features. Comparing those images with the photo used on the “Ara Hakobyan” account using Amazon’s face-similarity analysis system showed very high similarity.
Thousands of friends, but an unverified identity
Unlike the others, the “Babken Avetisyan” account has more than 6,000 friends, but no person with the listed birth data is found in the voter registry.
The account was created on November 11, 2024, and the first posts currently accessible date only to March 2025.
The account mainly shares political content, mostly pro-government posts.
The user has many posts, but MediaNews reprinted only a few of them (1,2,3, 4).
“Two photos posted on the “Babken Avetisyan” account are assessed as AI-generated images both by visual inspection and via AI-detection tools.
Facial identification tools again do not identify any real person; the results are dominated by AI-created images with the same facial features.
Not on Facebook, but on MediaNews
Medianews.site also published posts attributed to a user named “Angela Aramyan.” Two similar publications were found: on December 31, 2025 and on January 3, 2026.
One of the posts concerns Hayk Marutyan, the “New Force” prime ministerial candidate and former mayor of Yerevan, claiming that he sold all real estate he owned in Armenia. The other is about Narek Karapetyan, a member of the “Strong Armenia” party council.
“Hopar’s bun has beaten officials’ photos—applaud, you imbeciles,” the Medianews.site article says, citing the user.
However, a Facebook account named “Angela Aramyan” with the same photo cannot currently be found, unless it has been deactivated. At the same time, the photo attributed to the user has been available online since at least 2019 and was published on the Facebook page “Красивые девушки Украины.”
Moreover, on April 20 MediaNews circulated a post titled “Group fainting spells at Kocharyan’s штаб”. The attached article says they republished a Facebook post by a user named Aram Sahakyan.
“They say yesterday a severe shortage of valerian was felt in Robert Kocharyan’s offices; they had a group fainting spell,” the post was allegedly quoted. However, Facebook monitoring tools show that no user with that first and last name made a post with such content.
A post with the same content was first published by the Facebook page “Armenians of the World” as its own content and without citing any source. Note that the page mainly publishes pro-government content. It was then republished on medianews.site and its associated pages, presented as a post by someone named Aram Sahakyan.
The same post is spread within minutes by other pro-government pages
Besides MediaNews, these posts by “unknown” users are republished within minutes by the Facebook pages ArmeniaNews, ArmNews, “ARMENIA,” “Amazing World,” and New Armenia Blog/Նոր Հայաստան Բլոգ.
#CivilNetCheck has previously covered the activity of most of these pages, finding that all of them have a pro-government orientation. These pages also systematically targeted Archbishop Bagrat Galstanyan last year when protests began in Armenia, spreading false and conspiratorial theses.
See: How pro-CP pages target Archbishop Bagrat and link him to the Kremlin
Who is behind Medianews
Medianews.site has at least two Facebook pages with the same name, which together have around 358,000 followers. At the same time, the site lacks an “About us” section: it does not publish information about founders or the editorial team, articles are not signed, and no address or contact details are provided. The first available article on the site dates to October 2018. Despite this anonymity, its materials are republished by pro-government civic.am, “Haykakan Zhamanak,” freenews.am, and other sites.
An Infocom investigation in 2021 revealed that Medianews.site is connected to Armenianews.net, which in the domain data lookup system Who.is was registered in Taron Chakhoyan’s name. The investigation also showed that the two sites are managed from the same Google Analytics account. However, Medianews.site data were hidden in the Who.is system.
Note that before taking his current position, Chakhoyan was a blogger. Currently, almost all of his posts and statements are republished on Мedianews.site.
Chakhoyan had previously told #CivilNetCheck that he has no connection to Мedianews.site, but the new data available to us show something else.
Thus, unlike the Who.is platform, which shows the domain’s current status, the Bigdomaindata.com/whois platform also shows the domain’s history—when it was registered, through which company, and most importantly, what data were recorded at the time of registration, before the owner’s data were hidden.
According to those data, at the time the Medianews.site domain was registered in January 2018, the Registrant was listed as Taron Chakhoyan, with his residential address and contact details. The domain was registered through the Russian company RU-CENTER (nic.ru), one of the largest domain name registrars.
Later, in 2020, the domain data were hidden (Privacy Protection), as a result of which this information is no longer available on platforms like Who.is.
At the same time, studying the domain’s history shows that Medianews.site has been continuously active from 2018 to the present and never entered an available state that would indicate a new registration. The initial domain registration date—January 21, 2018—has remained unchanged. Only the visibility of the data changed: initially they were open and clearly pointed to Taron Chakhoyan’s details, but from 2020 onward they were simply hidden.
Taron Chakhoyan has repeatedly denied his involvement with Medianews.site, even in court. In particular, during a court hearing held in October 2025 (within the framework of the case filed by Arsen Ghukasyan), he stated that he did not register the Medianews.site domain and has no connection to it.
Moreover, in another court case (Hakob Karapetyan v. Taron Chakhoyan), the plaintiff side in 2024 was forced to withdraw the lawsuit because it was not possible to obtain legal evidence substantiating Chakhoyan’s connection to the site.
#CivilNetCheck contacted Taron Chakhoyan. He reaffirmed his position, insisting that he did not found Medianews.site and has no connection to the site. However, when we noted that we have evidence, he said: “How many times should I deny it? It’s been denied via a court claim. [...] As for it being registered with my data—today anyone can take someone’s data and register a domain or open a Facebook account in their name, but that doesn’t mean they belong to that person.”
However, in the archived data, not only Taron Chakhoyan’s first and last name are listed as the registrant, but also his residential address, phone number, and email address. The listed phone number matches the number through which #CivilNetCheck contacted Chakhoyan. This correlation significantly reduces the likelihood of a случай coincidence.
Thus, medianews.site, which has hundreds of thousands of followers, regularly republishes posts allegedly by “ordinary citizens” from accounts with unverified identities or even non-existent accounts, presenting them as public opinion and ensuring their wide dissemination. At the same time, the technical and archival data available regarding the site’s management point to a possible link to Taron Chakhoyan, which he publicly denies.
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