In Stepanakert, the capital of Nagorno-Karabakh, no one has forgotten the noise of the bombings, nor the humiliation of the defeat against Azerbaijan.
"This is my third war in Nagorno-Karabakh, what do you want me to tell you? We don't know how it will all end. Will all these deaths have been used for something?", Laments a passerby, in front of photos of fallen men.
Indeed, the Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh proclaimed their independence at the end of the Soviet era.
Until then, they were citizens of Azerbaijan, a Turkish-speaking country with a Muslim majority, but Armenia imposed this secession at the cost of a long war, which ended in 1994.
At the end of September 2020, a new conflict broke out between the two former Soviet republics.
An oil power led with an iron fist by Ilham Aliyev, with the decisive support of Turkey, which provided drones and dispatched mercenaries from Syria, Azerbaijan won a landslide victory in barely six weeks.
>> To see, our Focus: Nagorno-Karabakh: the human cost of the Armenian defeat
At the end of a Moscow-sponsored ceasefire that entered into force on November 10, 2020, the self-proclaimed Nagorno-Karabakh Republic - or Artsakh - lost much of the territory under its control, in particular the buffer zone with Armenia, conquered in the 90s.
Nagorno-Karabakh, this little piece of Armenia which does not enjoy any international recognition, is struggling today for its survival: "We have the duty to reclaim our lands in the name of all those who have shed their blood, testifies a another passerby. Whether through war or peaceful means. "
>> To see, our Focus: Nagorno-Karabakh: lands of conquest and exile
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