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GORIS, Armenia (AP) — The leader of the self-proclaimed Republic of Nagorno-Karabakh signed a decree Thursday formally dissolving the breakaway state on Jan. 1, confirming its surrender to Azerbaijan after a 32-year failed quest for independence and international recognition.
Samvel Shahramanyan, president of Nagorno-Karabakh, called Artsakh by its Armenian residents but internationally recognized as a sovereign territory of Azerbaijan, said in a decree that all state institutions would be dissolved.
A lightning military offensive by Azerbaijan last week forced the Nagorno-Karabakh government to surrender and disband its armed forces. The advance of Azerbaijani forces also triggered an exodus of the mountainous region’s ethnic Armenian residents, who say they fear genocide and are absolutely not willing to live under Azerbaijani rule.
More than 66,000 people – more than half of the region’s residents – have crossed the border into Armenia, and some officials expect the entire population to leave the country.
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Prominent members of the Nagorno-Karabakh government have also been arrested or have surrendered to the Azerbaijani government.
David Babayan, the breakaway government’s longtime spokesman who also briefly served as foreign minister, said he planned to hand himself over to authorities in Shusha, a city now controlled by Azerbaijan.
“You all know that I am on the blacklist of Azerbaijan and that the Azerbaijani side has demanded my arrival in Baku for an appropriate investigation,” Babayan wrote on Facebook. “This decision will obviously cause great pain and stress to my loved ones, but I am sure they will understand. My failure to appear, or worse, my escape, will cause serious harm to our long-suffering people.”
Azerbaijani border guards said on Wednesday they had arrested Ruben Vardanyan, Artsakh’s former state minister, and on Thursday the Azerbaijani State Security Service said he had been arrested on charges of financing state terrorism.
Nagorno-Karabakh has been hotly contested by the two former Soviet republics since a war in the late 1980s and early 1990s when the region’s Armenian-majority population tried to break away from the newly independent nation of Azerbaijan.
This first Nagorno-Karabakh War ended in a decisive Armenian victory. Both sides committed massacres, but ultimately the vast majority of Azerbaijanis – hundreds of thousands – were forced to leave the area.
In a brief war in 2020, Azerbaijan recaptured most of Nagorno-Karabakh, ending decades of Armenian control over the region.
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