The internationally unrecognised president of the breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh in the South Caucasus, Samvel Shahramanyan, signed an order on Thursday ending the existence of the Republic of Artsakh, the Armenian term for the secessionist state.
The document, which entered into force immediately after publication, ordered that all state institutions and organisations be dissolved by the end of the year.
Shahramanyan asked the region’s ethnic Armenian population to read the reintegration conditions put forward by Azerbaijan, from whom the region seceded in 1991, and to make their own decision on whether to remain in Nagorno-Karabakh or leave for neighbouring Armenia.
The region’s former Minister of Foreign Affairs, David Babayan, announced his decision on Thursday to surrender to Azerbaijan’s authorities, saying that his absence or escape would “seriously harm our long-suffering people”.
Former Prime Minister of Nagorno-Karabakh, Ruben Vardanyan, was arrested for four months in Azerbaijan, the country’s State Security Service said on Thursday. Verdanyan, an Armenian billionaire who renounced his Russian citizenship and relocated to Karabakh in 2022, later serving as the unrecognised republic’s Prime Minister for four months, is accused of financing terrorism, creating and participating in paramilitary groups not authorised by Azerbaijani law, as well as illegally crossing the Azerbaijani border.
On 19 September, Azerbaijan launched a military offensive in Nagorno-Karabakh, a self-proclaimed republic that is legally part of Azerbaijan but whose largely Armenian population seceded in 1991, in an attempt to bring the region fully under its control, having been emboldened by a recent nadir in Armenia’s relations with its long-time ally and security guarantor Russia.
Within 24 hours, the Karabakh authorities said they had agreed to a ceasefire brokered by Russia’s peacekeeping mission in the region, describing efforts by the international community to stop the war as “insufficient”.
Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said that Armenia had not taken part in the negotiations between Nagorno-Karabakh and Azerbaijan. According to the latest figures released by the Armenian government, over 65,000 people have now evacuated from Nagorno-Karabakh to Armenia, almost half the region’s population.