Internet disrupted in Armenia amid political turmoil and alleged coup attempt

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Network data from the NetBlocks Internet Observatory confirm disruption to internet connectivity in Armenia on the afternoon of Thursday 25 February 2021 amid turmoil in the leadership and claims of a military coup attempt. The anomalies have partial impact and corroborate user reports of issues getting online, affecting multiple networks. The disruptions may limit coverage of events on the ground.

Metrics show a fall in observed national connectivity to 82% of ordinary peak levels from around 2 p.m. local time, followed by a slight recovery as Armenia Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan accused the army of attempting a coup. Work is ongoing to assess the incident with no direct attribution made at the present time.

Internet disruptions associated with political crisis have been on the rise in the region , with Azerbaijan using targeted restrictions on social media for an extended period amid deadly clashes over the Nagorno Karabakh territory, a measure taken by authorities with the stated goal to limit online influence operations.

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Methodology

NetBlocks diffscans, which map the IP address space of a country in real time, show internet connectivity levels and corresponding outages. Purposeful internet outages may have a distinct network pattern used by NetBlocks to determine and attribute the root cause of an outage, a process known as attribution which follows detection and classification stages.

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