Pashinyan's statements about number of Armenians living in Karabakh contradict real data Faktyoxla lab research

Armenia's political leadership claims that some 120,000 Armenians now live in Khankendi and the surrounding territories. The Armenian authorities say that the rally of Azerbaijani eco-activists demanding to stop the illegal exploitation of Azerbaijan's natural resources can cause a major humanitarian disaster because Russian peacekeepers have blocked the passage of the Lachin road at the site of the rally. At the same time, if we study open sources provided by the Karabakh Armenians themselves, it turns out that this number is fake.

Armenian media outlets have been writing about the "blockade" of 120 thousand of Armenians for already several days. Armenia Today, citing Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, says "120 thousand people were in fact taken hostages". Parliament speaker Alain Simonyan twice voiced this number. On December 13, he wrote that the environmentalists were allegedly "Azerbaijani officers dressed like civilians, who blocked the only road connecting Karabakh with Armenia and took 120 thousand Armenians hostage". The next day Simonyan returned to the topic, once again expressing the view that "official Baku took 120 thousand people hostage, prevents their free movement and blocks natural gas supplies in winter; all this leads to a humanitarian disaster and indicates the need for large-scale international monitoring in Karabakh.

International publications and politicians have joined in blowing up the fake. Jean-Christophe Buisson of Le Figaro says "the lives of 120,000 people are in danger". MEP Francois-Xavier Bellamy believes that "Azerbaijan is keeping 120,000 civilians in Karabakh in a state of humanitarian crisis". Kathy Porter, a member of the US House of Representatives, also believes that, given the winter, Azerbaijan is blockading 120,000 people in Karabakh and is threatening to cut off gas supplies to them. French parliamentarian Isabelle Santiago called to "save 120 thousand people", for whom "the connection with the world was cut off". Blogger Sacha Durkop said, "Azerbaijan, blocking the only road to Karabakh and preventing the supply of energy, is holding some 120,000 civilians hostage". Anush Toranin, vice-mayor of Paris, an Armenian, writes that "120 thousand Armenian population suffers a serious humanitarian disaster: gas supply is cut off in the middle of winter"... and so on. And these are only statements from December 13-14, 2022.

That is, the picture is complete: all the speakers proceed from the fact that 120 thousand Armenians live on the territory of the Karabakh economic region of Azerbaijan now. The analytical center Faktyoxla lab tried to find out how many Armenians actually live in Karabakh.

FIRST METHOD OF RESEARCH

To do this, experts from the center have studied the documents on the "elections" held in the territory of the separatist puppet entity in Karabakh recently. According to the "Central Election Commission" of the fake regime of January 23, 2020, the number of voters there was 103506. Particularly, in Khankendi - 39218, in Askeran and adjacent villages - 11832, in Hadrut and adjacent villages - 8617, in Aghdere and adjacent villages - 13092, in Khojavend and adjacent villages - 17398, in Kelbajar and adjacent villages - 2136, in Shusha - 3930, in Lachin and adjacent villages - 7283.

Thanks to the victory of the Azerbaijani Army in the Karabakh war, Hadrut, Shusha, and the villages of Jabrayil, Shusha, Khojaly, Khojavand, and Lachin districts, which were included in the above statistics, were liberated and returned to Azerbaijani control. The villages of Sugovushan and Talysh of Tartar district were liberated from the occupants during the first days of the war, and after the war, the villages of Farrukh of Khojaly district, Pirler village of Aghdam district and Taglar, Chaylaggala and Ashaghi Taglar villages of Khojavand district were liberated from the occupants. According to the Trilateral Statement of November 9-10, 2020 of the leaders of Russia, Azerbaijan, and Armenia, the occupation troops of Armenia were withdrawn from the entire territory of the Aghdam district, while some of its villages were also counted in the population data of the separatist puppet unit.

In this case, if we subtract the figures of Shusha, Lachin, Hadrut and their surroundings, as well as several villages of Aghdam, Tartar, Khojaly, and Khojavand regions from the statistics of the fake regime, about 70 thousand people will remain. The Armenians living during the occupation in the territories liberated in the Patriotic War resettled in other places. The Armenian side traditionally calls the percentage of underage people as 40%, i.e. 70 thousand voters constitute 60% of the population, so the total figure is about 116,5 thousand people. It should be underlined that these are the figures which are announced by the puppets of Yerevan in Karabakh. What is the real situation?

After the defeat of Armenia in the Karabakh war, the surviving separatists four times played illegitimate "local elections". Let us consider the documents and other materials in open sources concerning the voters who took part in these staged events.

First "elections"

On October 12, 2021, the results of the "elections" held on October 10 in the villages of Kishlak and Khachmach of the Khojaly region, Syrkhavend of the Aghdam region, and Gargar of Khojavend region were announced. It does not matter who was elected and how many votes were obtained. Another thing is important: 440 people - 59,2% of the total number of voters participated in "elections". Thus, it is clear that a total of 743 voters live in the aforementioned villages. If we add the same standard 40% of children and adolescents to this figure, we get 1,238 people.

Second "elections"

The results of the "local elections" held on December 10, 2021, were announced on December 13, 2021. According to a statement circulated in the media, the elections were held in the town of Khojavand and the village of Gishi in the Khojavand district. The statement noted that 1,859 voters took part in those "elections," which is 37.05% of their total number. That is, there were only 5,018 voters in these settlements. If you add 40% of children and adolescents, it turns out that 8,363 people lived there.

Third "elections"

The results of the "local government elections" held on April 10, 2022, were made public on April 13, 2022. The information published on their results states that the elections are considered valid in the communities of Qarakend, Guneshli, Zavadyg, Sos, and Garadaghly of Khojavend district and Umudlu of Tartar district. A total of 1,258 voters participated in those elections, which is 49.35% of their total number. Thus, we can see that the total number of voters in these localities is 2,549 people. If we add to this 40% percent of children and adolescents, we get 4,248 people.

Fourth "elections"

On October 18, 2022, were announced the results of the "elections" held on October 9, 2022, in the villages around the city of Ahgdere: Bazarkend, Vangli, Syrhavend, Kichik Qarabay and the village of Kharkhan of Khojavend district. The information points out that 698 voters participated in the local elections, which is 41.72% of their total number. Thus, 1,673 voters live in these settlements. If we add 40% of children and adolescents to this number, the total number of residents in this territory would be 2,788 people.

Adding up all four numbers gives 16,637 people. Since the results of the local government "elections" in Khankendi and Aghdere have not been announced, it is not possible to calculate their population in this way.

SECOND METHOD OF RESEARCH

Another source for the study was the statistics of the return of the Armenians, accompanied by the Russian peacekeepers, who left their residences in the Karabakh Economic Region of Azerbaijan during the Patriotic War. The table prepared on the basis of data from the Russian Ministry of Defence, as well as Russian and Armenian-language websites, shows the dates and the number of Armenians who returned, as well as the cited source and the total number of "repatriates".

The return of Armenians who left Karabakh began on November 14, 2020. Figures for the first six days are taken from the official website of the Russian Defence Ministry. The information published in those days indicated how many people arrived and how many buses were used for this purpose. For some reason, this kind of information was not published in the following days.

November 14 - 9 buses (250 passengers)

November 15 - 19 buses (475 passengers)

November 16 - 19 buses (482 passengers)

November 17 - 24 buses (502 passengers)

November 18 - 23 buses (936 passengers)

On November 19 - 27 buses (1,235 passengers)

When the total number of Armenians who came back to the territories de-occupied by Azerbaijan was first announced there were 7,000 people on the list, but adding these numbers with the data of November 20 (1,900 people) and November 21 (1,100 people) we got only 6880 people. Let's consider that this was a rounded number. But when the second total number was announced on November 28, a more serious difference became visible. In the press release of the Armenian side the number 21,083 was specified, but the sum of 6,880 people with 1300 + 2115 + 2431 (or + 2115, see below) was 12,726 or 12,410 people.

Zhirayr Mirzoyan, the "minister of territorial administration and development" of the bogus regime, found an explanation for the contradiction. In a statement on November 30, he said that the Russian Defence Ministry did not name the exact number of Armenians who returned, in particular, those who came to the region unaccompanied by peacekeepers were not mentioned. Therefore, the Armenian side added another 30,000 people to the initial number.

It is worth mentioning that the number of Armenians returning to the zone of temporary deployment of Russian peacekeepers can hardly be called constant. Besides, Russian and Armenian-language websites have different calculations. For example, according to Russian media on November 28, 2,431 people returned, but Armenian sources indicate 2,115 people, the same as on the previous day, November 27. Or let us pay attention to the information of November 29 about the number of bus passengers. While Armenian sources claim that 23,500 people returned between November 14 and 29, Russian sources say 25,000.

A similar situation occurred on December 6: Russia-based "Argumenty i Fakty" newspaper writes about 1,244 returnees, while "Sputnik Armenia" reports about 859. There are quite a lot of such discrepancies.

There is also a significant difference between the numbers in the information released on November 30.

In a nutshell, after a long and hard work, the Armenian sources testified that 52 thousand people allegedly returned to Karabakh. However, in reality, this number does not exceed 21-22 thousand. There is a rough approximation between this figure and the number of voters counted in the first method of research (16,637 people) in illegal elections.

THIRD METHOD OF THE RESEARCH

On October 30, Ruben Vardanyan, a supporter of the occupation of Karabakh, a Russian billionaire, organized a rally in Khankendi. According to Armenian media, 40 thousand people took part in the rally. Let's put aside the political message and the timing of this rally and consider the facts.

The action, which took place on Revival Square, was filmed from several angles, so through the published footage, we can reveal interesting data. We can see that part of the square is occupied by a 70-meter flag.

With the Mapchecking crowd counting tool, we can count the number of people holding a rally in an open area.

Given these figures, we can draw an approximate area in the online tool.

After that, the tool itself shows the number of participants when arranging the indicators.

It turns out that 21,485 people took part in the rally. But we should also take into account the 70-meter flag, the buses which took people from Yerevan to Khankendi, and the military who created the illusion of mass participation... Though the billionaire Vardanyan spent a large sum of money, drove passengers from Armenia for 24 hours, mobilized all the forces, and attracted fighters of the illegal armed groups, he managed to gather less than 21.5 thousand participants.

CONCLUSIONS: The Armenian side claims that there are 120 thousand of Armenians living in Karabakh. However, the number of Armenians living in Khankendi does not exceed 11-12 thousand. If we compare Faktyoxla's calculations with the number of Armenians who returned after the end of the hostilities, we can say that the number of Armenians living in Karabakh is about 24-26 thousand people.

At the same time, it must be noted that even if there were not 120 thousand people there as the Armenian party claims but one million people, the demands of Azerbaijani environmental activists, NGOs, and media representatives have nothing to do with this number.

The research was conducted by Faktyoxla solely to expose the unreliable facts provided by the Armenian side.

Vestnik Kavkaza