Thread by @raffiwriter

Is there evidence that the Azerbaijani offensive in Nagorno-Karabakh was announced on Twitter before it occurred? This thread will explore an oddity that seems to suggest: Yes. 1/

Let's start with khankendi.az. Khankendi is the Azerbaijani name for the capital of Karabakh. This site is now down. But it appears to have been set up as a kind of municipal Web page in waiting. It's slogan was "Khankendi: We'll be back." /2

web.archive.org/web/2014100720…

It also had a link to a member of parliament. /3

web.archive.org/web/2014100800…

And in January 2020, a Twitter account for it was created, called @khankendi. Since then, the account has published 271 tweets. It seeks to give the impression of inclusiveness by using Armenian occasionally. But judged by its content it is an instrument of propaganda. /4

On Sat Sep 26 10:08:31 +0000 2020 @Khankendi published this tweet with a martial video of soldiers preparing for battle. The language here warns, in Armenian, that the Azerbaijani forces "are coming." /5

https://twitter.com/khankendi/status/1309796986191835136

In case that tweet vanishes, here is a screen grab, too. The timestamp comes from the embedded code. It is in UTC. Azerbaijan is UTC +4. So this means that was published at 2:08:31 pm in that time on Sat Sep 26. /6

I also pulled down the video embedded in the tweet. Its metadata indicates a create/modify date of 2020:09:26 10:08:26. That is consistent with it being copied shortly before upload, according to the above timestamp. /7

About two hours after that tweet was posted, a Twitter user in Rawalpindi, Pakistan commented on it. Google translates the comment as "Victory from God and imminent conquest." That was also on Sat Sep 26. /8

What makes all this curious, of course, is that fighting in Karabakh did not begin until the morning of Sept 27. The earliest tweet I could find was by @Pres_Artsakh. That was at Sun Sep 27 06:23:42 +0000 2020. His local time is also +4 UTC. So that was at 10:23 am. /9

Somehow, the people controlling the @khankendi account were aware the day before that Azerbaijani forces were "coming," and wanted to let people who could read Armenian know they were on their way. /End