Source: AFP
Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev supervised a military parade in Karabakh on Wednesday, weeks after his army retook the Karabakh region from Armenians as part of a lightning attack.
The President’s Office published pictures of Azerbaijani forces and a military band as part of the parade lineup in the main square of Khankendi (Stepanakert, according to the former Armenian name).
The pictures showed Azerbaijani flags raised in front of a building that housed the offices of the Armenian leadership in Karabakh, with the Azerbaijani emblem above the Soviet-era building.
Baku and Yerevan fought two wars to control the Azerbaijani enclave inhabited by Armenians, in 2020 and in the 1990s.
Wednesday marks the three-year anniversary of Azerbaijan’s overwhelming victory in the six-week war with Armenia, as a result of which Baku regained large areas controlled by Armenian forces over three decades.
Last September, Baku launched an offensive to reclaim the rest of the region, and after less than a day of fighting, the Armenian authorities in Karabakh laid down their arms and agreed to reintegrate with Azerbaijan.
Almost the entire Armenian population of the region (more than 100,000 people) left in the days that followed, sparking a major refugee crisis in Armenia.
The talks that took place under international auspices to reach a comprehensive peace agreement between the two rival countries in the Caucasus have failed to achieve a breakthrough so far.