Paris – Radio France Interna- tionale has inau- gurated its eigh- teenth language service, opening an Armenian-lan- guage newsroom on Monday, with a team of eight journalists and a mandate to reach young audiences through digital- only content. The new service will produce con- tent exclusively in Eastern Armenian, the official language of the Republic of Armenia, and will prioritise social media platforms including Instagram, Facebook and TikTok. “Armenian youth, like most young people in the world today, are ultra- connected. Traditional media have been abandoned. So if we want to reach that audience, we have to go through social media,” said Astrig Agopian, the desk’s editor-in-chief. The team’s primary aim is to in- form, narrate the news and verify facts through innovative formats, drawing on correspondents based in-country. Reporter Lilit Shahverdyan, originally from Nagorno-Karabakh, will be deployed to Armenia from the end of May to cover the country’s upcom- ing legislative elections in real time, a posting she described as “a gift from heaven.” Elections and disinformation Those elections represent the desk’s first major test. Armenia has been at the centre of regional tensions in recent years following the conflict with Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Kara- bakh, and the vote is already being targeted by a Russian disinformation campaign. As in Hungary last month, the prospect of closer ties with the Euro- pean Union is one of the campaign’s defining themes, and one Moscow has firmly opposed.