140 thousand people may settle in Nagorno-Karabakh by 2026, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev said in a speech in the city of Shushi – a city in Nagorno-Karabakh that has been under the control of Azerbaijan since 2020.
“The return of 140,000 people is envisaged in the Karabakh region by 2026. I hope that next year the first residents will come and settle in the city of Shushi,” Aliyev said, according to RBC.
Shushi is located about 10 km from the capital of Nagorno-Karabakh, Stepanakert.
Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said in June that it was the loss of Shushi in 2020 that became a turning point in the war with Azerbaijan, since the city had both strategic and symbolic significance. A trilateral ceasefire agreement with Azerbaijan and Russia dated November 9, 2020 was signed after its loss. So the city, which had been under the control of Karabakh since 1992, came under Azerbaijan’s control.
