RFE/RL – Satellite Photos Confirm Destruction Of Karabakh’s Largest Church

The images show an empty space at the site of the imposing Holy Mother of God Cathedral in Stepanakert. Contacted by RFE/RL’s Azerbaijani Service on Wednesday, Azerbaijan’s Foreign Ministry declined to comment on its demolition.

The cathedral was consecrated by the Armenian Apostolic Church in 2019 after almost 13 years of construction. Its underground section was used by many Stepanakert residents as a bomb shelter during the 2020 Armenian-Azerbaijani war.

Sergei Shahverdian, a former Karabakh official now based in Yerevan, was the first to report on Tuesday that the cathedral appears to have been torn down. It was not visible in fresh videos of central Stepanakert posted by Azerbaijani social media users and cited by Shahverdian.

Armenian media published last week photographs suggesting that another, smaller Armenian church in Stepanakert has been razed to the ground. It had been built in the 1990s.

Several other Karabakh Armenian churches have also reportedly been destroyed after the 2020 Armenian-Azerbaijan war and Azerbaijan’s full recapture of Karabakh in 2023. Also, Baku announced in early 2022 plans to erase Armenian inscriptions from medieval Karabakh churches. The move prompted serious concern from the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom. The European Parliament likewise condemned “the elimination of the traces of Armenian cultural heritage in the Nagorno-Karabakh region.”

The Armenian government essentially stopped accusing Azerbaijan of systematically desecrating or destroying Armenian monuments in Karabakh after Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian first recognized Azerbaijani sovereignty over the territory in 2022. The government remained silent on Wednesday about the demolition of the Stepanakert cathedral. Pashinian has repeatedly declared in recent years that the Karabakh issue is closed for his administration.

Exiled Karabakh activists, who fled the region in 2023 along with its entire Armenian population, say Yerevan’s silence has only encouraged Baku to continue the church demolitions. One of them, Artak Beglarian, believes Pashinian’s government could have stopped that process by raising the issue on the international stage.