Author: Emil Lazarian

Satellite imagery confirms that the regime demolished the church in Artsakh’s former capital city of Stepanakert.

The sustained threats to Armenian religious and cultural heritage across Artsakh (also known as Nagorno-Karabakh) have reached a new level following reports that the Azerbaijani regime has razed another prominent church in the region.

Satellite imagery obtained by Caucasus Heritage Watch (CHW) confirmed that the Holy Mother of God Church, which stood in the former capital city of Stepanakert, was demolished within the last eight weeks.

The Artsakh Tourism and Cultural Development Agency shared the news of the church’s destruction on social media on Tuesday, April 21, only three days before the 111th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide. Though the agency did not share photos of the demolition in its notice, CHW’s researchers were able to pinpoint supporting photographic evidence within a day by pulling images from the Sentinel-2 satellite from March 3 and April 2.

“Higher resolution imagery will provide a clearer picture in the coming weeks,” the group of scholars said in a statement. “CHW will also continue working with satellite image providers to try to provide greater resolution on the timing of the destruction.”

Unlike the centuries-old churches and burial grounds that have been damaged, appropriated, or destroyed by the Azerbaijani regime since the forced displacement of over 130,000 Armenians in September 2023, the Holy Mother of God Church was consecrated in 2019 after 12 years of construction. During the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War in 2020, the church served as a bomb shelter amid the Azerbaijani bombardment of Stepanakert.

Scholars have warned that Azerbaijan’s targeted destruction of these sites, having accelerated since the swift and deadly 2023 takeover of the Artsakh region, amounts to “cultural genocide.”

News of the latest demolition comes shortly after the resignation of the Armenian Genocide Museum-Institute Director Edita Gzoyan at the request of Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan. While accompanying United States Vice President JD Vance and his wife for a visit to the Tsitsernakaberd Memorial complex in Yerevan last February, Gzoyan reportedly presented Vance with a book about Artsakh, which Pashinyan interpreted as a “security issue.”

“On my instructions, yes, I asked her to write a resignation letter. I considered it a provocative act, contrary to the foreign policy pursued by the government,” Pashinyan reportedly said at a briefing.

In his campaign for reelection coming up on June 7, Pashinyan, who has long been blamed for the dissolution of the 33-year-old autonomous state, has repeatedly reiterated that further dialogue surrounding Artsakh threatens the 2025 peace agreement in which Armenia and Azerbaijan agreed to recognize each other’s (newly established) territorial integrity. On April 20, Pashinyan most recently emphasized that the “Karabakh topic,” as in the push for negotiating the ethnic Armenian population’s right of return to the region, has been closed for the sake of peacekeeping.

This Friday, April 24, institutions and individuals around the world will commemorate the victims of the Armenian Genocide, the mass killing of 1.5 million Armenians under the Ottoman Empire in 1915, which the governments of Turkey and Azerbaijan continue to deny to this day.

The Country to Live party, linked to former Nagorno-Karabakh State Minister and businessperson Ruben Vardanyan, has announced a memorandum of cooperation with the Strong Armenia Alliance of Parties, founded by Russian–Armenian billionaire Samvel Karapetyan, ahead of Armenia’s 2026 parliamentary elections.

Vardanyan is currently serving a 20-year sentence in Azerbaijan on charges of crimes against peace and humanity, war crimes, and terrorism — allegations he rejects.

According to the memorandum signed on Tuesday, Karapetyan’s alliance and the Country to Live ‘are uniting their political, organisational, and human resources’ to participate in the 7 June parliamentary elections.

The party said the agreement envisages ‘forming a unified political agenda and ensuring the active involvement of the regional teams’ of Country to Live within the alliance.

Strong Armenia’s electoral list, published again on Tuesday, does not include the Country to Live party’s founders, Mesrop Arakelyan and Mane Tandilyan, though no detailed explanation was provided. Other members of the party were included.

The party said the decision to cooperate was made amid ‘serious security, political, and value-based challenges’ in Armenia, which ‘require nationwide consolidation, responsibility, and clear political will’.

The statement also stressed that cooperation was based, among other issues, on the ‘inarguable priority of returning Armenian prisoners as a key prerequisite for restoring national dignity and establishing a just and lasting peace’.

‘On 7 June, around 2.5 million people will have the opportunity to make a choice. Around 2.5 million, except for 19, who remain imprisoned in Baku solely for being Armenian’, Arakelyan said, expressing confidence that Karapetyan would ‘spare nothing’ to ensure their return.

Azerbaijan has officially acknowledged holding 19 Armenian detainees, including former political and military leaders of Nagorno-Karabakh, who are serving sentences on various charges.

Arakelyan further noted that the parliamentary elections would be ‘a choice between surrender and resistance’ and ‘a choice to have a state where the return of Armenian detainees becomes an unquestionable priority’.

The statement was made while Strong Armenia convened a congress to approve the first 30 candidates on the alliance’s electoral list to be submitted to the Central Election Commission.

On the same day, the alliance also announced it would be formally named the Strong Armenia Alliance of Parties, after dropping Karapetyan’s name in line with recent amendments to Armenia’s electoral code banning personal names in alliance titles.

Alongside Karapetyan’s party, the coalition includes two smaller, less prominent parties — New Era and United Armenians. Earlier talks saw the group considering the inclusion of more established parties, such as the Armenian National Congress under Armenia’s first president, Levon Ter-Petrosyan, but negotiations failed to produce an agreement.

Public opinion surveys have indicated that Karapetyan’s alliance is poised to be Pashinyan’s Civil Contract’s primary opponent in the June elections.

In the meantime, Karapetyan remains under house arrest, which was extended by three months in mid-April, on charges of calling for a coup, money laundering, and others.

He is also not included in the alliance’s electoral list despite being named its prime ministerial candidate. This move sparked controversy due to legal requirements that stipulate that candidates for the position should hold only Armenian citizenship and have resided in the country for the past four years.

Karapetyan announced in April that he had initiated the process of renouncing his Russian and Cypriot citizenship ahead of the elections.

NATO’s new Special Representative for the Caucasus and Central Asia, Ambassador Kevin Hamilton, made his first visit to Armenia on 20 – 21 April, urging deeper relations.

Hamilton was received by Armenia’s President Vahagn Khachaturyan and met Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, National Assembly Speaker Alen Simonyan, Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan, Defence Minister Suren Papikyan and Security Council Secretary Armen Grigoryan, the NATO press service announced on Wednesday.

Talks covered NATO’s partnership with Armenia, regional security including hybrid threats, connectivity and the Armenia – Azerbaijan peace process. Hybrid threats is a term used for a mix of military and non-military tactics such as cyber attacks and disinformation.

Hamilton also welcomed Armenia’s continued contributions to the NATO-led peacekeeping mission in Kosovo, known as KFOR.

NATO says it is ready to deepen cooperation

Armenia’s work to modernise its armed forces and improve interoperability — the ability of different militaries to operate together — with NATO forces was also discussed, NATO said.

The alliance added it “stands ready” to further political dialogue and security and defence cooperation with Armenia.

Hamilton also met representatives of Armenian civil society and of Allied embassies in Yerevan during the trip.