Decree dissolves Nagorno-Karabakh statelet by January
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The separatist republic of Nagorno-Karabakh in Azerbaijan will cease to exist by 1 January as more than 65,000 people from the Armenian enclave have fled.
The separatist leader of Nagorno-Karabakh ordered on Thursday the dissolution of all state institutions by the end of the year, saying the separatist statelet "ceases to exist" from 1 January 2024.
An Azerbaijani court then placed Ruben Vardanyan in pre-trial detention after charging him with financing terrorism and other crimes.
A Baku court ruled that Vardanyan, a businessman who headed the ethnic Armenian region from November 2022 until February this year, should be arrested and placed in pre-trial detention for four months, Azerbaijan's state security service said.
Meanwhile, Yerevan said Thursday the exodus continued from the breakaway enclave which Azerbaijan recaptured last week in a lighting offensive.
By Thursday morning, "65,036 forcefully displaced persons crossed into Armenia from Nagorno-Karabakh," Armenian government spokesperson, Nazeli Baghdasaryan, said in a statement.
Some 120,000 ethnic Armenians were estimated to be living in the territory before Baku's offensive to retake the territory.
"The state is providing suitable housing to all those who do not have a predetermined place of residence," she said.
On Sunday, Azerbaijan reopened the sole road linking Nagorno-Karabakh with Armenia, the Lachin corridor policed by Russian peacekeepers — four days after Armenian separatist forces agreed to lay down arms and disband their army.
The return of the Armenian-populated separatist enclave under the control of the central government in Baku has led to a mass exodus of ethnic Armenians.
Internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan, Nagorno-Karabakh, which broke away from Baku three decades, was at the center of two wars between mostly Christian Armenia and predominantly Muslim Azerbaijan.
