BANNER: Stylized depiction of a ballot cast into a ballot box.

Recent and upcoming elections in Georgia, Moldova, Azerbaijan and Armenia demonstrate the multitude of stressors that test a state’s ability to maintain democratic freedoms. In October 2024, Georgia held parliamentary elections that international observers characterized as “fundamentally flawed,” with the V-Dem Institute in Sweden subsequently downgrading the country from an “electoral democracy” to an “electoral autocracy.” That same month, Moldova conducted a presidential election and European Union (EU) accession referendum, both passing by razor-thin margins amid what Moldovan President Maia Sandu called an “unprecedented assault” on democracy. Subsequent parliamentary elections took place in September 2025. Azerbaijan, operating under a firmly authoritarian system, hosted municipal elections in January 2025 that served primarily to legitimize ongoing repression by the current regime. Armenia, meanwhile, will conduct parliamentary elections in June 2026 as it continues to navigate rapidly evolving changes in its security and diplomatic partnerships, testing the nation’s democratic resilience after decades of tensions with Armenia that frequently spiraled into conflict.

These elections share more than proximity in time and geography. All four countries exist within overlapping zones of Russian influence and interference, Western engagement, and contested territorial sovereignty. Prolonged territorial conflicts—involving the Russian-occupied regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia in Georgia, Transnistria and Gagauzia in Moldova, and Armenia’s defeat by Azerbaijan in Nagorno-Karabakh—have created ongoing sources of instability that can be weaponized by malign actors during electoral periods. While foreign aid, Western political support, and EU integration pathways become opportunities for democratic stabilization, they also serve as potential targets for narrative warfare. These structural vulnerabilities create opportunities for both foreign and domestic actors to exploit information environments.

Foreign influence operations do not function in isolation. They exploit and rely on a web of domestic actor connections that blurs the line between foreign information manipulation and interference (FIMI) and domestic information manipulation. This ecosystem relies on a range of actors, from direct proxies and ideological co-optees to opportunistic domestic actors who, while lacking formal ties to a foreign power, weaponize foreign narratives to serve localized political agendas. This creates a dynamic in which influence is effectively laundered: foreign entities provide an initial narrative spark that domestic actors then adopt and localize, granting the operation a level of cultural resonance and perceived legitimacy, as well as plausible deniability for malign actors. As a result, these campaigns often appear to be domestic in origin, ensuring that foreign strategic interests are embedded within legitimate political discourse, thereby complicating attribution and bypassing traditional democratic defenses.

This report examines three dimensions of this phenomenon. First, it analyzes the role of anti-Western narratives—priming distrust, delegitimizing opposition, and justifying legal restrictions framed as defenses against interference. Second, it documents how unresolved territorial conflicts were exploited as narrative leverage during electoral periods. Third, it maps the ecosystems of digital platforms that facilitated the reach of influence operations across distinct national contexts.

Social media platform dynamics varied across the four countries. In Georgia, Facebook remained dominant for domestic political discourse; local and foreign actors exploited this through coordinated advertising and inauthentic amplification, while Meta’s 2025 policy shift on factchecking was exploited to undermine and delegitimize independent researchers. In Moldova, Russian influence operation extended into multiple platforms, such as TikTok, X, Facebook, and Telegram, achieving a large amount of exposure despite the attempts by local authorities to limit their reach. In Armenia, Telegram served as the primary vector for content targeting Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, while inauthentic websites mimicking legitimate news outlets appeared across multiple operations. In Azerbaijan, X served as the primary platform for state-aligned operations targeting international audiences, with domestic media establishing narratives which online networks then amplified abroad.

This report presents findings that represent one year of activity within these information environments but is informed by an extensive years-old monitoring effort. Given each country’s distinct historical, linguistic, and political dynamics, the research acknowledges the challenges of making direct comparisons between one another. Nor is the analysis intended to be exhaustive; rather, it prioritizes narrative trends, actors, and tactics most relevant to the specified electoral cycles. The report’s scope enables identification of structural similarities and localized divergences in how information environments are shaped around electoral contests. A leaked document on influence strategy in this region prepared for the Office of President of Russia added further context to the developments described in this report. The document described the strategy for working with Russian diaspora in Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia, focusing on segmentation, developing cultural ties, as well as utilizing other means of engagement, including through religious institutions. Although the document does not specifically address elections, it once again confirms how building influence through various forms occurs over time and can be mobilized later for specific political contexts.