Nagorno-Karabakh to cease exist after Azerbaijan’s victory in 2024

From next year, the self-declared republic of Nagorno-Karabakh will no longer exist. This is because the president made a decision to shut down all government offices after being defeated by Azerbaijan.

Last week, the Azerbaijani win caused a large number of Armenian people living in Nagorno-Karabakh to leave, and it also brought an end to many years of fighting.

President Samvel Shahramanyan’s order requires all institutions and organizations in the Republic of Artsakh, which is not recognized internationally, to shut down by the beginning of next year.

The Republic of Nagorno-Karabakh (Artsakh) has officially stopped existing, according to a statement shared on Facebook by the Artsakh government.

Shahramanyan said the decision was made because the military and political situation is currently very difficult.

Azerbaijan’s campaign went on for 24 hours, until both sides agreed to a ceasefire arranged by Russia. As part of the ceasefire, Karabakh’s armed forces were disbanded. However, the Azerbaijani president strongly emphasized that the government of Artsakh should also disband itself. The president warned that if they did not comply, the attack would persist until it was completely finished.

The decree said that Azerbaijan needs to allow the people of Nagorno-Karabakh to freely and without any problems go through the Lachin corridor with their belongings and vehicles.

Nagorno-Karabakh is a region that is part of Azerbaijan, but it has been running its own government independently for many years. After a sudden and quick attack by Azerbaijan, where at least 200 people died and many more were hurt, the government in Baku stated that they have regained control of the area. This seems to have put an end to a conflict that has been going on for over a hundred years.

Azerbaijan has always been clear that the Armenian people living there had to decide between staying and becoming citizens of Azerbaijan or leaving. Most people have decided to leave their family home instead of being ruled by Baku.

In the past week, more than half of the people in Nagorno-Karabakh have moved to Armenia. This happened because Azerbaijan opened the Lachin corridor, which is the only road connecting Nagorno-Karabakh to Armenia. This allowed the people to leave.

Around 60,000 people have entered Armenia from the border by Thursday morning. Many of them were in a very bad condition, as mentioned by Samantha Power, who works for the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). She visited the town of Kornidzor on Tuesday.

Nagorno-Karabakh has been cut off from the outside world for 10 months because Azerbaijan-backed activists created a military checkpoint on the Lachin corridor. They have stopped the import of food, medicine, and fuel to the country. CNN interviewed people who live in Stepanakert, the main city of the region, before the attack. These residents shared that they had to spend a lot of time waiting in a queue every day just to get their daily amount of bread.

Power said on Tuesday that the recent military attacks have made a very bad situation even worse. Doctors at the scene reported that many of the people who had arrived were extremely hungry and malnourished.