Karabakh, the open wound that Armenia wants to hurry to close

Barcelona“Don’t you dare say I surrendered Karabakh!”, shouted Armenia’s Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan a few weeks ago at a refugee from that territory with whom he started arguing on the Yerevan metro. In September 2023, Azerbaijan invaded the self-proclaimed Republic of Artsakh, a territory in dispute since the fall of the Soviet Union, and expelled the more than 100,000 ethnic Armenian inhabitants who remained there. Neither Pashinyan, nor Karabakh’s ally Vladimir Putin, nor any leader from the Western world did anything to prevent it. That defeat is still an open wound today for tens of thousands of displaced people and a national trauma that the Armenian candidate for re-election, in Sunday’s legislative elections, is trying to bury.

The discussion about who is responsible for the loss of Nagorno-Karabakh continues to divide Armenian society. Karabakh refugees feel betrayed by Armenia, Russia, and the West, but they mainly point to Pashinyan's government. “They were negotiating on behalf of our people and were the guarantors of our security,” Artak Beglaryan, former Minister of State of Artsakh, explains to ARA. In contrast, the Armenian Prime Minister blames the Russian army, which had peacekeepers deployed in the area and did not act to prevent Azerbaijan's lightning offensive. “Pashinyan is honest when he says we did not capitulate,” Richard Giragosian, director of the Regional Studies Center, based in Yerevan, tells ARA.

Armenia’s leader, the first not to come from the Karabakh political elites, went from defending Artsakh’s self-determination in 2018, when he came to power, to assuming Azerbaijani sovereignty due to the impossibility of defending the territory, and finally, to considering this issue a burden. From his point of view, Moscow used the conflict to maintain influence in the region as the only actor capable of guaranteeing stability there. And with the defeat of 2023, Pashinyan felt freed from this yoke, moved closer to the West, and promoted the idea of “real Armenia,” meaning protecting the country’s current borders and abandoning historical claims. 

of the peace process that Yerevan and Baku initiated in August 2025 under the auspices of Donald TrumpAn unresolved conflict

This is why the irredentism of the displaced Karabakhis is an inconvenient reality for the prime minister. 70% live in poverty and are unemployed. Furthermore, they complain that they have lost the aid they received from the administration. “The humanitarian policies of the Armenian government have failed,” assures Beglaryan, who also denounces “a sharp discourse of hate against refugees” politically exploited by the executive.

Their main demand is to return to their land, where cultural heritage organizations warn that Christian temples are being destroyed. However, they complain that Pashinyan is in favor of them “forgetting” their right to return and even “obstructs” any effort to internationalize their struggle. Giragosian believes that it is “not realistic” to expect “a territorial reparation” or that “morale is above geopolitics,” but Beglaryan believes that “it is not about realism, but about rights.” “Ignoring them is normalizing heinous mass crimes against our people and against all of humanity,” he declares. At the same time, he views positively that the pro-Russian opposition does defend the restoration of the rights of the Karabakhis.

The Karabakh conflict is a central element of the peace process that Yerevan and Baku initiated in August 2025 under the auspices of Donald Trump of the peace process that Yerevan and Baku initiated in August 2025 under the auspices of Donald Trump. The former Artsakh Minister of State believes it is unviable to reach a successful conclusion as long as “the consequences of the genocide and ethnic cleansing” of his people are not addressed and “the policy of hatred against Armenia in Azerbaijan” persists. “It is like having peace in Europe with the Nazi regime still installed in Germany and telling the Jewish people that they can return because there is peace now,” he points out. 

For his part, political scientist Hacopian believes that Pashinyan's “nationalist” position will receive “a virulent reaction” from young people in five or ten years. According to him, the prime minister has wanted to convince them that “liberalization is equivalent to defeat and humiliation,” and therefore assures that polls show that the new generations want “a pro-Western, nationalist, and militarist Armenia.” Meanwhile, older people are the ones who show more alignment with the prime minister and his acceptance of the irreversible loss of Karabakh.