Armenian expert downbeat about Azerbaijan's regaining control over Lachin

Armenian expert in oriental studies Vardan Voskanyan has said that another heinous act of national shame and humiliation is over, but whether it is the end.

"Berdzor, Aghavno (Lachin, Zabukh) and Sus were the last pieces of the 'Armenian sacred' land in the Karabakh region, which were regained as a result of our glorious liberation war of the 1990s and today are given to the enemy," Voskanyan noted, Caliber.Az reports with reference to the Armenian media.

"Future generations of Armenians, faced with the danger of being left without citizenship, will curse us if we, as a nation and country, having already reached the bottom of this hellish abyss of shame and humiliation, do not finally come to our senses and do not decide to implement the plan for Armenia’s revival," the expert added.

"Armenia and the Armenian people should think, live and act only in this direction, otherwise we will be added to the shameful list of nations and countries that lost their place in the ancient sun of Central Asia," he wrote.

To recap, President Ilham Aliyev announced that Azerbaijan regained control over Lachin city on August 26.

A Moscow-brokered ceasefire deal that Baku and Yerevan signed on November 10, 2020, brought an end to six weeks of war between Armenia and Azerbaijan. The Azerbaijani army declared a victory against the Armenian troops. The signed agreement obliged Armenia to withdraw its troops from the Azerbaijani lands that it had occupied since the early 1990s. The agreement stipulated the return of Azerbaijan's Armenian-occupied Kalbajar, Aghdam and Lachin regions. Before the signing of the deal, the Azerbaijani army had liberated around 300 villages, settlements, city centres, and historic Shusha city.

About 30,000 Azerbaijanis were killed and one million got displaced from their ancestral lands during the first Karabakh war from 1988 to 1994. 

In the early 1990s, Armenians perpetrated systematic crimes and atrocities against Azerbaijanis to break the spirit of the nation and annihilate the Azerbaijani people of Karabakh. The Khojaly genocide is regarded as the culmination of mass murders committed by Armenians.

Some 613 Azerbaijanis, including 63 children, 106 women and 70 elders were brutally murdered on the ground of national identity in Khojaly in 1992.

This heinous act was preceded by a slew of others. Armenians set fire to around 20 houses in Gazakh District's Baghanis-Ayrim village, killing eight Azerbaijanis. A family of five, including a 39-day-old newborn, were all burnt alive.

Between June and December 1991, Armenian troops murdered 12 and wounded 15 Azerbaijanis in Khojavand District's Garadaghli and Asgaran District's Meshali villages.

Armenian military detachments bombed buses on the Shusha-Jamilli, Aghdam-Khojavand, and Aghdam-Garadaghli routes in August and September of the same year, killing 17 Azerbaijanis and injuring over 90 others.

In October and November 1991, Armenians burned, destroyed, and plundered over 30 settlements in the mountainous area of Karabakh, including Tugh, Imarat-Garvand, Sirkhavand, Meshali, Jamilli, Umudlu, Garadaghli, Karkijahan, and other significant villages.

Many of the Armenia-committed massacres on Azerbaijan's formerly occupied territories meet entirely the requirements of the Genocide Convention, which was approved by the United Nations General Assembly on December 9, 1948.

About 4,000 Azerbaijanis went missing as a result of the first Karabakh war and Armenia has yet to present Azerbaijan with details about their whereabouts.