On the anniversary of the first day of the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War, Armenian officials in the Republic of Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh have said that the conflict will not end until the question of status for the disputed region is settled.

The first anniversary of the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War was marked by a minute of silence at 11:00 in Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh. 

Top Armenian officials, including Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, marked the day with a visit to the Yerablur military cemetery of Yerevan. President of Nagorno-Karabakh Arayik Harutyunyan was also in Yerevan for a meeting with Pashinyan. 

The previous day, late in the evening, the leader of Armenia’s Armenia Alliance bloc, Robert Kocharyan also visited Yerablur.

Armenia’s Foreign Ministry has released a statement stressing that the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict will not end until ‘the determination of the status of Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh)’ that takes into account the ‘realisation of the inalienable right to self-determination’ of Nagorno-Karabakh’s Armenian population, the return of Armenian refugees from Nagorno-Karabakh to their homes, and the ‘preservation of Armenian cultural and religious heritage in the territories falling under the Azerbaijani control’.

Nagorno-Karabakh’s Foreign Ministry, meanwhile, released a statement underlining that they would not accept any status where they would come under Azerbaijani control. 

‘The foreign policy priorities of Artsakh continue to be the international recognition of the independence of the Republic of Artsakh, preservation of its status as a geopolitical subject, de-occupation of the territories of Artsakh, ensuring the continuation of the negotiation process with the full-fledged participation of Artsakh within the framework of the OSCE Minsk Group’, the statement reads.

[Read more: Azerbaijan marks anniversary of Second Nagorno-Karabakh War]

 For ease of reading, we choose not to use qualifiers such as ‘de facto’, ‘unrecognised’, or ‘partially recognised’ when discussing institutions or political positions within Abkhazia, Nagorno-Karabakh, and South Ossetia. This does not imply a position on their status.