“Our struggle will continue,” Gagik Baghunts, the acting Karabakh parliament speaker, told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service. “The Armenians of Artsakh will not accept the idea that we have closed the page of Artsakh, and the desire to return will always stay with us. I hope that we will have significant success in that direction already in the not-so-distant future.”
“We are taking concrete steps, we will continue to do everything possible so that the Artsakh Armenians return to the homeland, our historical homeland, and I hope that despite my rather old age, I will return, not my grandchildren.”
Baghunts refused to shed light on those efforts, saying only that the Karabakh leaders are ready for “cooperation with world powers” and even “contacts with the Azerbaijani authorities.” He would not say whether there have already been such contacts.
Armenia - Gagik Baghunts, the acting Karabakh parliament speaker, talks to RFE/RL, February 20, 2024.
The Azerbaijani government says that the Karabakh Armenians are free to return to their homes if they agree to live under Azerbaijani rule. Karabakh’s leaders and ordinary residents rejected such an option even before the Azerbaijani offensive forced them to flee to Armenia. None of the more than 100,000 Karabakh refugees are known to have expressed a desire to return home in the current circumstances.
The Russian Foreign Ministry said last week that Moscow and Baku are now “discussing prospects for the return of the Armenian population to Karabakh.” Karabakh’s human rights ombudsman, Gegham Stepanian, dismissed the statement, saying that only “international guarantees” could convince the Karabakh Armenians to return to their homeland.
Armenia’s government does not seem to be seeking such guarantees. Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian has repeatedly indicated that the Karabakh issue is closed for his administration.
Pashinian’s political allies lashed out at Samvel Shahramanian, the Karabakh president, in late December after he declared null and void his September 28 decree liquidating the self-proclaimed Nagorno-Karabakh Republic. Shahramanian said that he had to sign the decree in order to stop the Azerbaijani assault and enable the Karabakh Armenians to safely flee to Armenia.
Shahramanian, Baghunts and other Yerevan-based Karabakh leaders laid flowers at the Yerablur military ceremony in Yerevan on Tuesday as they marked the 36th anniversary of the start of a popular movement for Karabakh’s unification with Karabakh. Later in the day, the Karabakh legislature held a special session on the occasion.
Nagorno-Karabakh - Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian holds a rally in Stepanakert, August 5, 2019.
For the first time, Pashinian, who had famously declared in 2019 that “Artsakh is Armenia,” issued no statement on the anniversary.
“Both in 1988 and today, the realization of peoples’ right to self-determination and democratic freedoms remain a clear goal for us,” he stated in February 2020. “And we are sure that we will achieve our goals with joint efforts.”
Pashinian stopped championing that right in early 2022 and publicly recognized Azerbaijani sovereignty over Karabakh a year later. His critics say that the drastic policy change paved the way for Baku’s recapture of the depopulated region. The premier has reportedly refused to meet Shahramanian and other Karabakh leaders since they took refuge in Armenia.
“Armenia did not have a foreign policy, it had a Nagorno-Karabakh policy,” Pashinian claimed in December 2023. “Armenia did not have a security agenda, it had a Nagorno-Karabakh security agenda. The resources that we should have invested in creating the Republic of Armenia we have invested in creating the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic.”