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Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh Republic)
A self-declared republic in the South Caucasus, never recognized by any UN member, dissolved in 2024
For three decades the self-declared Republic of Artsakh, also called the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic, governed a mountainous area of the South Caucasus that Armenians call Artsakh and Azerbaijanis call Karabakh. It had a president, a parliament, armed forces, and an ethnic Armenian population of roughly 120,000 in its final years, but no United Nations member ever recognized it, including Armenia, its closest backer. Internationally the territory was regarded as part of Azerbaijan. The dispute produced two wars and a long armed standoff. It ended in September 2023, when Azerbaijan took control in a military operation lasting about a day, the republic's leaders agreed to dissolve it, and nearly the entire Armenian population left for Armenia.
The republic lay on the eastern slopes of the Lesser Caucasus, a land of forested ridges, deep river gorges, and high pastures descending toward the Kura-Aras lowland. From 1994 to 2020 the Armenian side controlled about 11,500 square kilometers, including most of the former Soviet autonomous oblast and all or part of seven surrounding Azerbaijani districts, whose Azerbaijani population had been displaced. After the 2020 war its area shrank to roughly 3,200 square kilometers, linked to Armenia only by the Lachin corridor road. Its capital was Stepanakert, which Azerbaijan calls Khankendi. Shusha, called Shushi by Armenians, a hilltop town important to both peoples, lies just to the south. The whole territory is now under the control of Azerbaijan, whose sovereignty over it is internationally recognized.
The Armenian-majority Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast of Soviet Azerbaijan voted in 1988 to join Armenia, and local leaders proclaimed a republic on September 2, 1991, confirmed in a December referendum that Azerbaijanis boycotted. War from 1992 to 1994 killed tens of thousands and displaced hundreds of thousands of Azerbaijanis and Armenians. Azerbaijan regained the surrounding districts and part of the region in a 44-day war in 2020. From December 2022 traffic on the Lachin corridor was severely restricted, which Armenia called a blockade and Azerbaijan denied. After Azerbaijan's operation of September 19, 2023, which it called anti-terrorist measures, the republic's president decreed its dissolution effective January 1, 2024. More than 100,000 people left for Armenia, which described the exodus as ethnic cleansing, a charge Azerbaijan rejects. The two countries initialed a peace agreement in Washington in August 2025.