‘Centuries of history lost’: Armenians describe journey to safety after fall of Nagorno-Karabakh.
Terrified families fleeing in fear of ethnic cleansing after the collapse of Nagorno-Karabakh are running out of water and fuel during the desperate two-day journey to neighbouring Armenia.

More than 90,000 Karabakh Armenians – around three-quarters of the total population – have now left their homes in the breakaway enclave, which is internationally recognised as being part of Azerbaijan.

The United Nations fears the fall of the region could mean there will eventually be no Armenians left in Nagorno-Karabakh, prompting concerns of ethnic cleansing. It is the largest exodus of people in the South Caucasus since the collapse of the Soviet Union.

The breakaway area – also known by Armenians as Artsakh – had enjoyed de facto independence for three decades before Azerbaijan launched a lightning military operation earlier this month. It forced separatist forces to lay down their weapons and agree to formally dissolve the breakaway government.

Fearing reprisals, as Baku’s forces moved into the main cities and arrested Armenian officials, hungry and scared families packed what few belongings they could into cars and trucks and left their homes for good.

Valeri, 17, fled the village of Kichan, 70km (43 miles) north of the Armenian border with his family and neighbours. In total, they squeezed 35 people into a Ford Transit and made the four-day journey to safety, sitting on top of each other and sleeping in shifts.

Families hitched lifts on the back of trucks as they fled Nagorno-Karabakh (Handout)
Families hitched lifts on the back of trucks as they fled Nagorno-Karabakh (Handout)
“We couldn’t take anything with us because the shelling was too intense as we escaped,” he told The Independent.

They had to hide in a large waste water pipe to escape artillery fire, he said. In the chaos, families were separated and the poor mobile coverage in the mountainous regions means they are still trying to reconnect.

His family has been forced to move six times since the early 1990s and, like so many Armenians, find themselves homeless again.

“I don’t think it’s possible to go back to Kichan, even if we could go back everything will be wrecked or stolen,” he said.

Others described a 40km (25 miles) stretch of hairpin road to Armenia at a near standstill, with some vehicles breaking down for a lack of fuel. In the lead-up to Azerbaijan’s operation, Baku had imposed a 10-month blockade on the enclave leading to chronic shortages of food and petrol supplies.

“All you can see is a sea of cars stretching to the horizon, people are cooking by the side of the road,” said Gev Iskajyan, 31, executive director of the Armenian National Committee of Artsakh, as he arrived exhausted in the Armenian capital Yerevan. He fled the region’s main city Stepanakert, or Khankendi as it is known in Azerbaijan, fearing he could be arrested if he stayed.

“Resources are so scarce there, people are running out of water and fuel on the road along the way out. If anything happens to children and the elderly, no one can get to them. Ambulances can’t move,” he told The Independent.

He said most families believed they would not ever be able to return home and that this was the end of Armenian presence.

“It weighs heavy. Nagorno-Karabakh isn’t just a place, it is a culture, it has its own dialect,” he said. “You look at the people in the back of trucks, they have to fit their entire life in a single box, they can’t bring everything, they can’t go back, it breaks your heart.

“It is centuries of history lost.”

Nagorno-Karabakh isn’t just a place, it is a culture, it has its own dialect

Gev Iskajyan, an Armenian advocate who fled to Yerevan

The centuries-old conflict that has raged through the disputed enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh remains the longest-running in post-Soviet Eurasia.

The 4,400-square-kilometre territory (1,700 square-miles) is officially part of Azerbaijan but after a bloody war following the dissolution of the USSR in the 1990s, the region’s Armenian-majority population enjoyed state-like autonomy and status.

That changed in 2020 when Azerbaijan, backed by Turkey, launched a military offensive and took back swathes of territory in a six-week conflict that killed thousands of soldiers and civilians. Russia, which supports Armenia, brokered a tense cessation of hostilities.

But that was broken earlier this month when Baku launched a 24-hour blitz which proved too much for Armenian separatist forces, who are outgunned and outnumbered. They agreed to lay down their weapons and dissolve the entire enclave.

Residents still left in Nagorno-Karabakh told The Independent that Azerbaijani forces and police entered the main city.

“People are intensively fleeing after the forces entered, and took over the governmental buildings,” said one man who asked not to be named over concerns for his safety.

Baku has also detained prominent Armenians as they attempted to flee, prompting fears more arrests may follow. Among them was Ruben Vardanyan, a billionaire investment banker, who served as the head of Karabakh’s separatist government between November 2022 and February this year.

On Friday, Russian state media reported that the Azerbaijani military had also detained former separatist commander Levon Mnatsakanyan as he also tried to escape. He led the army of the self-proclaimed Republic of Artsakh from 2015 to 2018.

The UN, meanwhile, said they were readying themselves for as many as 120,000 refugees to flood into Armenia, a third of them children.

“The major concern for us is that many of them have been separated from their family,” said Regina De Dominicis, regional director of the UN’s child agency.

Kavita Belani, UNHCR representative in Armenia, said: “This is a situation where they’ve lived under nine months of blockade. When they come in, they’re full of anxiety, they’re scared, they’re frightened and they want answers.”

Almost all of Nagorno-Karabakh's people have left, Armenia's government says.
An ethnic Armenian exodus has nearly emptied Nagorno-Karabakh of residents since Azerbaijan attacked and ordered the breakaway region’s militants to disarm, the Armenian government said Saturday.

Nazeli Baghdasaryan, the press secretary to Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, said that 100,480 people had arrived in Armenia from Nagorno-Karabakh, which had a population of around 120,000 before Azerbaijan reclaimed the region in a lightning offensive last week.

A total of 21,076 vehicles had crossed the Hakari Bridge, which links Armenia to Nagorno-Karabakh, since last week, Baghdasaryan said. Some lined up for days because the winding mountain road that is the only route to Armenia became jammed.

The departure of more than 80% of Nagorno-Karabakh's population raises questions about Azerbaijan’s plans for the enclave, which was internationally recognized as part of its territory. The region's separatist ethnic Armenian government said Thursday it would dissolve itself by the end of the year after a three-decade bid for independence.

Pashinyan has alleged the ethnic Armenian exodus amounted to “a direct act of an ethnic cleansing and depriving people of their motherland.” Azerbaijan’s Foreign Ministry strongly rejected the characterization, saying the mass migration by the region's residents was “their personal and individual decision and has nothing to do with forced relocation.”

In a related development, Azerbaijani authorities on Friday arrested the former foreign minister of Nagorno-Karabakh’s separatist government, presidential adviser David Babayan, Azerbaijan’s Prosecutor General’s Office said Saturday.

Babayan's arrest follows the Azerbaijani border guard's detention of the former head of Nagorno-Karabakh’s separatist government, State Minister Ruben Vardanyan, as he tried to cross into Armenia on Wednesday.

The arrests appear to reflect Azerbaijan’s intention to quickly enforce its grip on the region after the military offensive.

During three decades of conflict in the region, Azerbaijan and the separatists backed by Armenia have accused each other of targeted attacks, massacres and other atrocities, leaving people on both sides deeply suspicious and fearful.

While Azerbaijan has pledged to respect the rights of ethnic Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh, most are fleeing because they don’t trust Azerbaijani authorities to treat them humanely or to guarantee them their language, religion and culture.

After six years of separatist fighting ended in 1994 following the collapse of the Soviet Union, Nagorno-Karabakh came under the control of ethnic Armenian forces, backed by Armenia. Then, during a six-week war in 2020, Azerbaijan took back parts of the region in the south Caucasus Mountains along with surrounding territory that Armenian forces had claimed earlier.

In December, Azerbaijan blocked the Lachin Corridor, the only road connecting Nagorno-Karabakh with Armenia, accusing the Armenian government or using it for illicit weapons shipments to the region’s separatist forces.

Weakened by the blockade and with Armenia’s leadership distancing itself from the conflict, ethnic Armenian forces in the region agreed to lay down arms less than 24 hours after Azerbaijan began its offensive. Talks have begun between officials in the Azerbaijani capital of Baku and Nagorno-Karabakh’s separatist authorities on “reintegrating” the region into Azerbaijan.

More than 80% of Nagorno-Karabakh's population flees as future uncertain for those who remain.
The exodus of more than 80% of the population of Nagorno-Karabakh raises questions about Azerbaijan's plans for the ethnic Armenian enclave following its lightning offensive last week to reclaim the breakaway region.

The Armenian government said Friday evening that more than 97,700 people, from a population of around 120,000, had fled to Armenia since Azerbaijan attacked and ordered the region's militants to disarm. The enclave's separatist government said it would dissolve itself by the end of the year after a three-decade bid for independence.

Some people lined up for days to escape Nagorno-Karabakh because the only route to Armenia — a winding mountain road — became jammed with slow-moving vehicles.

Armenian Health Minister Anahit Avanesyan said some people, including the elderly, had died while on the road to Armenia, because they were “exhausted due to malnutrition, left without even taking medicine with them, and were on the road for more than 40 hours.”

On Thursday, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan alleged that the exodus of ethnic Armenians from Nagorno-Karabakh amounted to “a direct act of an ethnic cleansing and depriving people of their motherland.” Azerbaijan’s Foreign Ministry strongly rejected Pashinyan’s accusations, saying the departure of Armenians was “their personal and individual decision and has nothing to do with forced relocation.”

Laurence Broers, an expert on the Caucasus with the London-based think tank Chatham House, said it was unlikely that significant numbers of Armenians would remain in Nagorno-Karabakh and that “the territory will become homogenous.”

“If you define ethnic cleansing as actions by force or through intimidation to induce a population to leave, that’s very much what the last year or so has looked like,” he said.

During the three decades of conflict in the region, Azerbaijan and separatists inside Nagorno-Karabakh, alongside allies in Armenia, have accused each other of targeted attacks, massacres and other atrocities, leaving people on both sides deeply suspicious and fearful.

While Azerbaijan has pledged to respect the rights of ethnic Armenians in the region, most are now fleeing, because they don’t believe that Azerbaijani authorities will treat them fairly and humanely or guarantee them their language, religion and culture.

In December, Azerbaijan blocked the only road connecting Nagorno-Karabakh with Armenia, accusing the Armenian government or using it for illicit weapons shipments to the region’s separatist forces.

Armenia alleged the closure denied basic food and fuel supplies to Nagorno-Karabakh. Azerbaijan rejected the accusation, arguing that the region could receive supplies through the Azerbaijani city of Aghdam — a solution long resisted by Nagorno-Karabakh authorities, which called it a strategy for Azerbaijan to gain control of the region.

In the 1990s, the Azerbaijani population was itself expelled from Nagorno-Karabakh and hundreds of thousands of people were displaced within Azerbaijan. As part of its “Great Return” program, the government in Baku has already relocated Azerbaijanis to territories recaptured from Nagorno-Karabakh forces in a 2020 war.

Analysts believe Azerbaijan could expand the program and resettle Nagorno-Karabakh with Azerbaijanis, while stating that ethnic Armenians could stay or exercise a right to return in order to “refute accusations that Karabakh Armenians have been ethnically cleansed,” Broers said.

A decree signed by the region’s separatist president, Samvel Shakhramanyan, cited a Sept. 20 agreement to end the fighting under which Azerbaijan would allow the “free, voluntary and unhindered movement” of Nagorno-Karabakh’s residents to Armenia.

Some of those who fled the regional capital, Stepanakert, said they had no hope for the future.

“I left Stepanakert having a slight hope that maybe something will change and I will come back soon, and these hopes are ruined after reading about the dissolution of our government,” 21-year-old student Ani Abaghyan told The Associated Press.

“I don’t want to live with the Azerbaijanis," said Narine Karamyan, 50. “Maybe there are some people who will return to their homes. I don’t want that. I want to live as an Armenian.”

After six years of separatist fighting ended in 1994 following the collapse of the Soviet Union, Nagorno-Karabakh came under the control of ethnic Armenian forces, backed by Armenia. Then, during a six-week war in 2020, Azerbaijan took back parts of the region in the south Caucasus Mountains along with surrounding territory that Armenian forces had claimed earlier. Nagorno-Karabakh was internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan’s sovereign territory.

Armine Ghazaryan, who crossed into Armenia from Nagorno-Karabakh with her four young children, told the AP that it was the second time she had been displaced from her home, saying she had previously sheltered with her children in her neighbors' basement during the war in 2020.

“At least we live in peace here. At least we stay in Armenia," she said upon arriving in the Armenian town of Goris.

On Monday night, a fuel reservoir exploded at a gas station where people lined up for gas to fill up their vehicles to flee to Armenia. At least 68 people were killed and nearly 300 others were injured, with more than 100 others still considered missing after the blast, which exacerbated fuel shortages that were already dire after the blockade.

On Friday the State Emergency Service of Nagorno-Karabakh's interior ministry said 170 remains and body fragments had been collected and would be sent to Armenia for DNA identification.

Avanesyan, the Armenian health minister, said 142 people who were injured after the fuel tank exploded were taken to Armenia for treatment and that some of them were in very serious condition.

On Thursday, Azerbaijani authorities charged Ruben Vardanyan, the former head of Nagorno-Karabakh’s separatist government, with financing terrorism, creating illegal armed formations and illegally crossing a state border. He was detained on Wednesday by Azerbaijani border guards as he was trying to leave Nagorno-Karabakh for Armenia along with tens of thousands of others.

Vardanyan, a billionaire who made his fortune in Russia, was placed in pretrial detention for at least four months and faces up to 14 years in prison. His arrest appeared to indicate Azerbaijan’s intent to quickly enforce its grip on the region.

Another top separatist figure, Nagorno-Karabakh’s former foreign minister and now presidential adviser David Babayan, said Thursday that he would surrender to Azerbaijani authorities who ordered him to face an investigation in Baku.

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