— Apollo Strategic Communications Circulated Covert Media Hit Piece Against ANCA; Firm Deactivates X Account, Scrubs Staff Page after Leak
WASHINGTON, DC – The Armenian National Committee of America (ANCA) is demanding full transparency from Apollo Strategic Communications, a London-based public relations firm with documented ties to Azerbaijan and its Caspian energy partners, after the firm was exposed for secretly circulating a media advisory to U.S. journalists targeting the ANCA for its advocacy on behalf of Americans of Armenian heritage.
The March 2, 2026, email – sent by Apollo’s Daniel Blake-Martin and leaked by a number of news agencies that received it – invited American editors to write hit pieces against the ANCA, recycling false arguments regularly advanced by Azerbaijani and Turkish government interests against pro-Armenia advocates in Washington. The firm’s memo offered American journalists access to four off-the-record sources – including an unnamed congressional staffer, an Armenian ruling-party MP, and figures from academic and think-tank circles – to place stories damaging to the ANCA.
ANCA Executive Director Aram Hamparian described it as “a scripted hit-piece against the ANCA sent in stealth to American journalists — a blueprint for slander, enlisting the anonymous backing of Armenians from Garo Paylan to Maria Karapetyan, MP — to punish the ANCA, not for our vices but for our virtues,” in a published op-ed responding to the campaign. “Assaulted for standing foursquare for the security of Armenia, the return of Armenians to Artsakh, the end of Azerbaijani occupation, the protection of Christian holy sites, and — perhaps most ‘unforgivable’ of all for Baku and its BP patrons — accountability for Azerbaijan’s crimes against the Armenian people.”
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One of those sources, Garo Paylan, has since publicly disavowed the campaign on X, writing that “messages were sent to journalists on my behalf regarding Armenia that I did not authorize.” Since the leak, Apollo deactivated its X (formerly Twitter) account and removed Blake-Martin from its website.
The ANCA is pressing Apollo for answers to four key questions: Who hired Apollo to pitch hit pieces against the ANCA, and how much were they paid? If Apollo acted on behalf of a foreign principal in America, against an American organization, why has it not registered with the Department of Justice under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA)? How and why did Apollo enlist Maria Karapetyan, Nzhdeh Hovsepyan, and Garo Paylan in this covert campaign? And what connections does Apollo’s parent company, RSK Group, have to Azerbaijan, the Aliyev family, and Caspian energy companies?
California Courier publisher and columnist Harut Sassounian, whose weekly column scrutinized the Apollo memo in detail, raised the prospect that the operation may constitute a FARA violation. “The ASC memo was sent to the American media by a UK, not U.S., PR firm, possibly intending to circumvent” federal foreign lobbying disclosure requirements, Sassounian wrote — adding that Apollo failed to respond to multiple requests for comment, “resulting in a PR firm doing negative PR against itself.”
As Sassounian reported in the California Courier, RSK Group, Apollo’s parent company, maintains a wholly owned subsidiary — Azerbaijan Environment and Technology Centre Ltd. — with an in-country office and active project work in the Caspian region. Apollo itself has operated under multiple names since its registration in 2009, previously known as “Red Public Relations Limited” and “Apollo Public Relations Limited.”
“The ANCA publicly shares our work — enlisting our community via open calls to activism, press releases, and national townhall meetings,” Hamparian wrote. “Apollo’s involvement, by contrast, would have remained entirely unknown had their emails not been leaked. All that remains is for Apollo now to reveal who exactly is paying for this anti-ANCA defamation — the terms of any contracts, and the dollar amounts involved.”
Armenian Americans can follow the ANCA’s ongoing coverage and advocacy at https://anca.org.
