On August 22nd, a Georgian-language article claiming that Margarita Simonyan, the editor-in-chief of the Kremlin’s propaganda media Russia Today, was stripped of her nationality by the Patriarch of Armenia and her portrait was thrown into the river Araks went viral on Facebook. (1,2). The article mentions that Karekin II prohibited Simonyan from addressing God in the Armenian language and from entering any Armenian church throughout the world.
On August 22nd, an identical article was published on the website pirvelinews.com.
The information that the Patriarch of Armenia stripped Margarita Simonian of her nationality and threw her portrait into the Araks River originates from the Russian satirical publication panorama.pub and is a fictional story.
A fictional story related to Margarita Simonyan, the editor-in-chief of the Kremlin state media RT (Russia Today), was published on the “New Generation” website in July 2020, although the website does not mention that the article was based on a satirical publication.
The mentioned article was published on the website of the satirical publication – panorama-pub on July 21st, 2020. According to the article, Simonyan’s criticism of the Armenian government was the reason for her nationality being revoked.
2 days earlier, panorama-pub published an article, in which it was mentioned that Azerbaijani MPs offered Margarita Simonian Azerbaijani citizenship and honorary residency of Sumgait city.
A warning is published on the website that the news posted on it is not real news and is “a grotesque parody of reality”. In addition, the site’s logo also mentions that the publication has satirical content.
Satirical stories of panorama.pub have been presented as real stories in the past as well. For more, see the articles prepared by “Myth Detector:”
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- Did Latvia Grant Assistance to Former Pioneers?
- Do the Words “We Only Had Sex, They (Soviet People) Had True Love” Belong to Kissinger?
- Did WHO Top Official Die after Choking on Broccoli?
- Did Kim Jong-un Place Monument to Stalin in North Korea?
- Kissinger’s Interview about USSR is Fake and was Disseminated by Progressnews based on a Russian Satirical Edition
- How did Russian “Satire” Become the Source of Saqinform’s Disinformation?
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