About the webinar
The South Caucasus has become one of Europe's most actively contested information spaces. From Georgia's turbulent 2024 parliamentary and presidential cycles to the emerging threat landscape ahead of Armenia's 2026 elections, foreign and domestic actors are systematically reshaping public discourse, undermining trust in democratic institutions, and testing the limits of EU engagement in the region. This session brings together analysts, practitioners, and policymakers to map the threat landscape and assess what a credible response looks like.
What we'll cover
- Mapping the threat: Georgia vs. Armenia — The FIMI landscape in each country differs substantially in terms of actors, channels, domestic amplifiers, and institutional vulnerabilities. We'll examine where foreign information manipulation ends and domestic manipulation begins — and what that blurring line means for attribution, accountability, and response strategies.
- Elections as flashpoints — Georgia's 2024 parliamentary and presidential cycles generated a documented record of tactics, techniques, and procedures. We'll assess what signals are already visible ahead of Armenia's 2026 elections, and how transferable the so-called "Moldova playbook" is proving as it gets redeployed across the region.
- EU missions as targets — We'll examine why EU missions and engagement have become such prominent targets of information attacks, and how narrative templates around "color revolutions," "deep state" conspiracies, "ultraliberal values," and "hybrid war" are being localized for very different audiences in Tbilisi and Yerevan.
- Resilience and response — We'll assess the current state of resilience in both countries and ask what the EU, member states, and partners should do next: on FIMI monitoring infrastructure, civil society support, strategic communication, and coordinated cross-border response.
Meet our speakers
Sopo Gelava is Associate Director for Research at the Atlantic Council's Digital Forensic Research Lab (DFRLab), where she focuses on information operations in the South Caucasus. Previously Director of Media Literacy Programs at Georgia's Media Development Foundation, she also teaches fact-checking and verification at the University of Georgia.
Ani Grigoryan is Editor and Founder of CivilNet Check at CIVILNET.AM — Armenia's first fact-checking initiative accredited by the International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN) and the country's only member of the European Fact-Checking Standards Network (EFCSN). With over 13 years of experience as an investigative journalist and information manipulation researcher, her work focuses on election-related FIMI, political narrative analysis, and information integrity in polarised environments.
Nino Dolidze is an independent democracy, elections, and information integrity expert with two decades of experience in Georgia and Eastern Europe. She previously served as Executive Director of the International Society for Fair Elections and Democracy (ISFED), where she led large-scale national election observation missions. She is the recipient of the 2025 Madeleine K. Albright Democracy Award for her leadership in defending election integrity.
Leonardo De Agostini is a Visiting Fellow at Fondazione CSF, where he works on European integration, foreign and security policy, and information manipulation. Previously at the EU Institute for Security Studies (EUISS), his work focused on strengthening EU CSDP against FIMI. He has also held roles at CEPS, the International Crisis Group, and the LSE.
