The 44-day war and the end of Armenian Karabakh
Azerbaijan wins back most of the Karabakh region in a 44-day war in 2020, blockades the remaining Armenian enclave, and in September 2023 takes it in a one-day offensive; more than 100,000 Armenians flee, ending their centuries-old presence there.
- Armenia and Azerbaijan: Anatomy of a Rivalry — Laurence Broers, Edinburgh University Press (2019)
- The Nagorny Karabakh Conflict in Its Fourth Decade — Thomas de Waal, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (2019)
- UN team in Nagorno-Karabakh, a first in 30 years, as ethnic Armenians flee — Al Jazeera (2023)
- The Armenian exodus from Nagorno-Karabakh — The New Humanitarian (2023)
- Armenia and Azerbaijan declare peace is at hand — Eurasianet (2025)
- Final election results in Armenia: Pashinyan's party wins majority — JAMnews (2026)
After the first war, Armenian forces held Karabakh and seven surrounding districts for a quarter of a century. Negotiations went nowhere. Azerbaijan, enriched by oil and gas, rebuilt its army; a four-day flare-up in April 2016 showed the balance shifting. Many Armenians, confident after the 1990s victory, did not believe a new war could be lost.
- Armenia and Azerbaijan: Anatomy of a Rivalry — Laurence Broers, Edinburgh University Press (2019)
- The Nagorny Karabakh Conflict in Its Fourth Decade — Thomas de Waal, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (2019)
The 44-day war
On 27 September 2020 Azerbaijan launched a full-scale offensive. With Turkish political and military backing and modern drones, its forces broke through in the south and advanced through the occupied districts. On 8 November they took Shusha, the historic town overlooking Stepanakert. On the night of 9–10 November Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan signed a Russian-brokered ceasefire: Armenia gave up the remaining districts, Azerbaijan kept what it had won, and about 2,000 Russian peacekeepers were deployed to guard what was left of Armenian-held Karabakh and the Lachin corridor to Armenia. Some 3,800 Armenian and 2,900 Azerbaijani soldiers were killed, many of them young conscripts, along with civilians on both sides.
- Armenia and Azerbaijan: Anatomy of a Rivalry — Laurence Broers, Edinburgh University Press (2019)
In Armenia, crowds stormed parliament on the night of the ceasefire. Pashinyan was called a traitor by many, but in June 2021 snap elections his party won again, as many voters blamed the old elite for the years before the war.
- Armenia and Azerbaijan: Anatomy of a Rivalry — Laurence Broers, Edinburgh University Press (2019)
Blockade and exodus
In September 2022 Azerbaijani forces attacked positions inside Armenia itself, and fighting killed some 300 people. From December 2022, Azerbaijani activists and then a checkpoint closed the Lachin corridor, the only road into Karabakh. For nine months, food, medicine and fuel ran short for its roughly 120,000 Armenians.
- The Armenian exodus from Nagorno-Karabakh — The New Humanitarian (2023)
- Armenia and Azerbaijan: Anatomy of a Rivalry — Laurence Broers, Edinburgh University Press (2019)
On 19 September 2023 Azerbaijan launched an offensive; within a day the Karabakh authorities surrendered. Fearing for their lives, almost the entire population left in about a week; by the end of September more than 100,000 people had crossed into Armenia, about 30,000 of them children. Hundreds were killed in the offensive and in a fuel-depot explosion as people fled. The Karabakh republic’s leaders, some of them arrested by Azerbaijan, signed its dissolution, effective 1 January 2024.
- UN team in Nagorno-Karabakh, a first in 30 years, as ethnic Armenians flee — Al Jazeera (2023)
- The Armenian exodus from Nagorno-Karabakh — The New Humanitarian (2023)
After Karabakh
Pashinyan’s government concluded that Armenia must make peace, normalise relations with Azerbaijan and Turkey and loosen its dependence on Russia, which many Armenians felt had abandoned them; Armenia froze its participation in the Russian-led security alliance. In August 2025, at the White House, Armenia and Azerbaijan initialled a peace agreement, including a US-backed transit route across southern Armenia; Azerbaijan made a change to Armenia’s constitution, which refers to Karabakh, a condition of signing.
- Armenia and Azerbaijan declare peace is at hand — Eurasianet (2025)
- Final election results in Armenia: Pashinyan's party wins majority — JAMnews (2026)
For Karabakh Armenians, the loss is total: homes, villages, monasteries such as Gandzasar and Dadivank, and the graves of their families. Many are struggling to rebuild their lives in Armenia, and for Armenians everywhere, the word “Artsakh” has become one of grief.
- The Armenian exodus from Nagorno-Karabakh — The New Humanitarian (2023)
A war of aggression, backed by Turkey, against a people defending its homeland, followed by a nine-month blockade that starved Karabakh and an assault that drove out its whole population: ethnic cleansing, carried out while Russian peacekeepers stood by and the West issued statements. Many Armenians see an echo of 1915 in a land emptied of Armenians and its heritage at risk.
- The Armenian exodus from Nagorno-Karabakh — The New Humanitarian (2023)
- Armenia and Azerbaijan: Anatomy of a Rivalry — Laurence Broers, Edinburgh University Press (2019)
A war of liberation that ended nearly thirty years of occupation, restored Azerbaijan's internationally recognised borders, and made return possible for hundreds of thousands of displaced Azerbaijanis. 8 November, the day Shusha was retaken, is celebrated as Victory Day. Azerbaijan says Karabakh Armenians were offered the chance to stay as Azerbaijani citizens and chose to leave.
- Armenia and Azerbaijan: Anatomy of a Rivalry — Laurence Broers, Edinburgh University Press (2019)
- UN team in Nagorno-Karabakh, a first in 30 years, as ethnic Armenians flee — Al Jazeera (2023)
Most international observers recognised Karabakh as Azerbaijani territory but criticised the blockade and the conditions that led to the near-total exodus; many human rights groups describe the outcome as ethnic cleansing, which Azerbaijan rejects. Analysts also stress that thirty years of failed diplomacy left the conflict to be settled by force.
- The Armenian exodus from Nagorno-Karabakh — The New Humanitarian (2023)
- The Nagorny Karabakh Conflict in Its Fourth Decade — Thomas de Waal, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (2019)
Why it matters today
This is the freshest wound in Armenian life. Thousands of young men died in 2020, almost every family knows one, and more than 100,000 Karabakh Armenians now live as refugees in Armenia, their churches and graves on the other side of a closed line. The defeat split the country between those who blame Prime Minister Pashinyan and those who blame his predecessors, Russia, or the world's indifference, and it shapes every argument about peace with Azerbaijan and Turkey.