Nagorno-Karabakh Republic will cease to exist from Jan 1 2024

MOSCOW, Sept 28 (Reuters) – The president of Armenia’s self-declared Nagorno-Karabakh Republic, Samvel Shahramanyan, has signed a decree to dissolve all state institutions from January 1, 2024, Karabakh Armenian authorities said on Thursday.

The self-declared republic will cease to exist from that day, the decree said.

More than half of the 120,000 ethnic Armenians of the Nagorno-Karabakh have arrived in Armenia after Azerbaijan’s lightning victory in a military operation against the breakaway region.

More than 65,036 people from Nagorno-Karabakh have crossed into Armenia, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan’s spokeswoman said.

A former head of the breakaway ethnic Armenian government in Nagorno-Karabakh was arrested by Azerbaijan on Wednesday as he tried to escape into Armenia as part of an exodus of tens of thousands of people that has triggered a humanitarian crisis.

Ruben Vardanyan, a billionaire banker and philanthropist, headed Karabakh’s separatist government between November 2022 and February 2023.

His wife Veronika Zonabend said on his Telegram channel that he had been arrested while trying to flee as part of a mass departure by ethnic Armenians after Azerbaijan took back control of Karabakh in a lightning offensive last week.

Azerbaijan’s border service said he had been taken to the capital Baku and handed over to other state agencies.

Karabakh is internationally recognised as part of Azerbaijan but populated mostly by ethnic Armenians who broke away in the 1990s in the first of two wars there since the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Azerbaijan, a mainly Muslim country, says it wants to peacefully reintegrate the Armenians and will guarantee their civic rights, including to practise their Christian religion. It says no one is forcing them to leave.

But given the bloody history between the two sides, ethnic Armenians are fleeing in fear, abandoning their homes and boarding cars and trucks that have jammed the snaking mountain road that leads to Armenia.

Photo: Ethnic Armenian flee Karabakh for Armenia sitting in a truck at the Lachin checkpoint controlled by Russian peacekeepers and Azeri border guards, Azerbaijan. EPA-EFE/ROMAN ISMAYILOV