Vazgen Zaveni Sargsyan was an Armenian military commander and politician. He was the first Defence Minister of Armenia from 1991 to 1992 and then from 1995 to 1999. He served as Armenia's Prime Minister from 11 June 1999 until his assassination on 27 October of that year. He rose to prominence during the mass movement for the unification of Nagorno-Karabakh with Armenia in the late 1980s and led Armenian volunteer groups during the early clashes with Azerbaijani forces. Appointed defence minister by President Levon Ter-Petrosyan soon after Armenia's independence from the Soviet Union in late 1991, Sargsyan became the most prominent commander of Armenian forces during the First Nagorno-Karabakh War. In different positions, he regulated the military operations in the war area until 1994, when a ceasefire was reached ending the war with Armenian forces controlling almost all of Nagorno-Karabakh and seven surrounding districts.
Robert Sedraki Kocharyan is an Armenian politician. He served as the President of the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic from 1994 to 1997 and Prime Minister of Nagorno-Karabakh from 1992 to 1994. He served as the second President of Armenia between 1998 and 2008 and as Prime Minister of Armenia from 1997 to 1998.
Levon Hakobi Ter-Petrosyan, also known by his initials LTP, is an Armenian politician and historian who served as the first president of Armenia from 1991 until his resignation in 1998.
Stepanakert or Khankendi is a city in the Nagorno-Karabakh region of Azerbaijan. The city was under the control and the capital city of the breakaway Republic of Artsakh prior to the 2023 Azerbaijani offensive in the region. The city is located in a valley on the eastern slopes of the Karabakh mountain range, on the left bank of the Qarqarçay (Karkar) river.
Serzh Azati Sargsyan is an Armenian politician who served as the third President of Armenia from 2008 to 2018, and twice as the Prime Minister of Armenia from 2007 to 2008 and again from 17 to 23 April 2018, when he was forced to resign in the 2018 Armenian revolution.
The Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast (NKAO) was an autonomous oblast within the Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic that was created on July 7, 1923. Its capital was the city of Stepanakert. The majority of the population were ethnic Armenians.
Anti-Armenian sentiment, also known as anti-Armenianism and Armenophobia, is a diverse spectrum of negative feelings, dislikes, fears, aversion, racism, derision and/or prejudice towards Armenians, Armenia, and Armenian culture.
United Armenia, also known as Greater Armenia or Great Armenia, is an Armenian ethno-nationalist irredentist concept referring to areas within the traditional Armenian homeland—the Armenian Highland—which are currently or have historically been mostly populated by Armenians. The idea of what Armenians see as unification of their historical lands was prevalent throughout the 20th century and has been advocated by individuals, various organizations and institutions, including the nationalist parties Armenian Revolutionary Federation and Heritage, the ASALA and others.
Armenia, officially the Republic of Armenia, is a landlocked country in the Armenian Highlands of West Asia. It is a part of the Caucasus region and is bordered by Turkey to the west, Georgia to the north and Azerbaijan to the east, and Iran and the Azerbaijani exclave of Nakhchivan to the south. Yerevan is the capital, largest city and financial center.
Raffi K. Richardi Hovannisian is an Armenian politician, the first Foreign Minister of Armenia and the founding leader of the national liberal Heritage party. He is the founder of the Armenian Center for National and International Studies, the country's first independent research center.
A bilateral relationship exists between Armenia and Israel. From 1993 to 2007, Armenia was served by the Embassy of Israel in Georgia. In 1996, Tsolak Momjian was appointed the honorary consul of Armenia in Jerusalem. Eleven years later, the residence of the Embassy of Israel in Armenia was moved to Jerusalem. In October 2010, Shmuel Meirom was appointed the Israeli ambassador to Armenia. Armen Melkonian was appointed the Armenian ambassador to Israel in 2012, with a residence in Cairo. In October of that year, Melkonian presented his credentials to Israeli president Shimon Peres. On 21 September 2019 Armenia announced that it would be opening an embassy in Israel. Despite generally cordial ties between the two, relations soured after Armenia withdrew its ambassador to Israel due to Israeli arms supply to Armenia's enemy, Azerbaijan, in the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh War.
Bilateral relations between modern-day Armenia and the Russian Federation were established on 3 April 1992, though Russia has been an important actor in Armenia since the early 19th century. The two countries' historic relationship has its roots in the Russo-Persian War of 1826 to 1828 between the Russian Empire and Qajar Persia after which Eastern Armenia was ceded to Russia. Moreover, Russia was viewed as a protector of the Christian subjects in the Ottoman Empire, including the Armenians.
Stepanakert Airport or Khojaly Airport is an airport in the town of Khojaly, 10 kilometers north-east of Stepanakert, Azerbaijan. The airport, in the Nagorno-Karabakh region, had been under the control of the self-proclaimed Republic of Artsakh from 1992 to 2023. Flights ceased with the escalation of the First Nagorno-Karabakh War in 1990.
The Madrid Principles were proposed peace settlements of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, proposed by the OSCE Minsk Group. The OSCE Minsk Group was the only internationally agreed body to mediate the negotiations for the peaceful resolution of the conflict prior to the renewed outbreak of hostilities in 2020. Senior Armenian and Azerbaijani officials had agreed on some of the proposed principles but made little or no progress towards the withdrawal of Armenian forces from occupied territories or towards the modalities of the decision on the future Nagorno-Karabakh status.
Anti-Armenian sentiment or Armenophobia is widespread in Azerbaijan, mainly due to the conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh. According to the European Commission against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI), Armenians are "the most vulnerable group in Azerbaijan in the field of racism and racial discrimination." A 2012 opinion poll found that 91% of Azerbaijanis perceive Armenia as "the biggest enemy of Azerbaijan." The word "Armenian" (erməni) is widely used as an insult in Azerbaijan. Stereotypical opinions circulating in the mass media have their deep roots in the public consciousness.
Anti-Azerbaijani sentiment, Azerophobia, Azerbaijanophobia, or anti-Azerbaijanism has been mainly rooted in several countries, most notably in Russia, Armenia, and Iran, where anti-Azerbaijani sentiment has sometimes led to violent ethnic incidents.
The Karabakh dialect, also known as the Artsakh dialect is an ancient Eastern Armenian dialect with a unique phonetic and syntactic structure. It was mainly spoken in the region of Nagorno-Karabakh prior to the 2023 Flight of Nagorno-Karabakh Armenians. It was spoken in the rest of Azerbaijan by Armenians before the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict broke out in 1988. However, outside Nagorno-Karabakh, the areas in Azerbaijan where the Karabakh dialect was spoken, had no Armenian majority, except for 24 villages in the Goygol and Goranboy districts until 1991. Today, it is spoken in parts of southern and northeastern Armenia, as well as by the refugees of Nagorno-Karabakh who since 2023 have settled in various cities and villages throughout Armenia.
The Karabakh movement, also known as the Artsakh movement, was a national mass movement in Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh from 1988 to 1991 that advocated for the transfer of the mainly Armenian-populated Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast of neighboring Azerbaijan to the jurisdiction of Armenia.
The 2016 Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, also known as the Four-Day War, April War, or April clashes, began along the former Nagorno-Karabakh line of contact on 1 April 2016 with the Artsakh Defence Army, backed by the Armenian Armed Forces, on one side and the Azerbaijani Armed Forces on the other.
During its existence, the Republic of Artsakh and the United States did not have official diplomatic relations as the United States was among the vast majority of countries that did not recognize Artsakh as a sovereign nation and instead recognized the region of Artsakh, or Nagorno-Karabakh, as part of Azerbaijan. Despite no formal relations, the Republic of Artsakh had a representative office in Washington, D.C. since November 1997. It is not known whether the office still functions after the apparent dissolution of Artsakh.
