Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev has declared that the Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh (Artsakh) will have to wither stay in their homes and live as Azerbaijani citizens and ethnic minority or leave.
Aliyev made the remarks in an interview with Euronews, when asked what his mission was: establish a lasting peace or win the war?
“Well, to win the war was the mission of my life, or at least my political life, and I successfully coped with it. We have won the war. We have restored justice, we have restored our territorial integrity. And now we’re talking about the world,” Aliyev said.
“If Armenia wants peace, we will achieve it, because we have no territorial claims against Armenia, and we do not want them to have territorial claims against us. I mean, the people who live in Karabakh, on the territory that is now temporarily controlled by Russian peacekeepers, are in Azerbaijan. They have to make a choice: stay here to live as our citizens and ethnic minority – you know, we have a lot of them – or leave.”
Since December 12, 2022, the sole road connecting Nagorno Karabakh to Armenia – the Lachin Corridor – has been blocked by Azerbaijan. Baku tightened the blockade on June 15, 2023, banning emergency relief supplies that were carried out by Russian peacekeepers and the International Committee of the Red Cross through the sole road connecting Karabakh to Armenia and the outside world. The move aggravated the shortages of food, medicine and other essential items experienced by the region’s population.
