Armenia moves to reclaim building in Yerevan from Nagorno-Karabakh authorities

The Prosecutor General's Office of Armenia has filed a lawsuit demanding the invalidation of the state registration of the property rights of the Nagorno-Karabakh government over its permanent representation in Yerevan.

The rights, according to the lawsuit, were granted on 31 January 2007.

The news of the legal case first spread on Wednesday, ahead of a press briefing by Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan on the same day.

Asked about the move, Pashinyan stated that ‘it is property that should belong to [...] Armenia’.

‘I’ve said it directly: I cannot allow a second state to exist within the Republic of Armenia. I said this before and hoped the message would be understood’,  Pashinyan said, adding that ‘otherwise, the state must take action’.

Armenian officials have been hostile to proposals for a Nagorno-Karabakh government in exile based in Armenia, warning it could be used by Azerbaijan as a pretext to take military action against Armenia.

In mid-November 2023, the Speaker of the Armenian Parliament, Alen Simonyan, said that establishing a government in exile would be a ‘direct threat and a blow to Armenia’s security’.

Yerevan warns of ‘ticking time bomb’ as Nagorno-Karabakh government-in-exile debate rages

A row between the Armenian Government and former officials from Nagorno-Karabakh is continuing over attempts to form a government-in-exile out of Yerevan. On Monday, the leader of Ardarutyun, a political party from Nagorno-Karabakh, told RFE/RL that anyone who opposed the continued functioning of Nagorno-Karabakh’s state institutions supported the ‘destruction of Artsakh’s [Nagorno-Karabakh’s] statehood.’ Similarly, in a thinly veiled attack on the Armenian Government last week, a group of

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After Azerbaijan attacked Nagorno-Karabakh in September 2023, forcing its government to surrender within a day of the assault, President Samvel Shahramanyan issued a decree to dissolve Nagorno-Karabakh and all of its institutions.

The building in Yerevan has since served as a seat for the region’s former officials, where refugees reportedly go for various issues.

‘It is definitely a political order, it was not a surprise, it was expected’, Artak Beglaryan, a former Nagorno-Karabakh State Minister, told RFE/RL.

Beglaryan further insisted that Pashinyan and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev were ‘collaboratively destroying everything related to Artsakh [Nagorno-Karabakh]’.

‘In parallel, Aliyev is destroying the buildings of Artsakh’s [Nagorno-Karabakh] state institutions in Stepanakert. And now, Pashinyan’s government wants to take away the only building of Artsakh’s [Nagorno-Karabakh] state institutions located in Yerevan’, Beglaryan said.

Beglaryan insisted that the Armenian government’s move was illegal, it was done ‘at Azerbaijan’s request’, as well as ‘an act of revenge’ against the former authorities of the region ‘for not aligning with Pashinyan’s political course’.

Nagorno-Karabakh Armenians end sit-in protest without achieving results

The protests were launched demanding solutions to their ‘urgent problems’.

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For ease of reading, we choose not to use qualifiers such as ‘de facto’, ‘unrecognised’, or ‘partially recognised’ when discussing institutions or political positions within Abkhazia, Nagorno-Karabakh, and South Ossetia. This does not imply a position on their status.