Vice published an article about the internationally unrecognized countries of Europe, where 6.5 million citizens live.
Following the collapse of the USSR and Yugoslavia, 21 new independent states were created. There were more than a dozen national and ethnic groups whose claims to sovereignty went unfulfilled. Some found ways to live in peace within Eastern Europe’s new borders. Others fought bloody ethnic wars to drive ‘occupying’ armies out of their homeland. Some appealed to Russia directly to help carry them into the fog of a post-Soviet future. Each of Eastern Europe’s six disputed regions has a unique story, and within each there are diverse voices, attempting to live normal lives in spite of the chaos they were born into. One of them is Nagorno-Karabakh, which is trying to have a peaceful life.
Vice writes that high in the Caucasus mountain chain at Eurasia’s crossroads, Armenia and Azerbaijan have been trapped in a long war over the status of Nagorno-Karabakh for more than 30 years. Karabakh is populated and controlled by Armenians, the world’s oldest Christian nation whose modern history is defined by a genocide perpetrated by the Turkish Ottoman government during the First World War.
After a long and uneasy ceasefire, hostilities over the status of Karabakh – or Artsakh as it is known locally – resumed in late 2020, as Azerbaijan’s Turkish-backed military advanced deep into the territory of the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic and retook land it lost in 1993. It took a devastating humanitarian toll.
Saro Saryan, whose family became refugees last year after they were forced to leave their house and property in Shushi. They have been refugees before, from Baku when there was anti-Armenian violence in 1988.
“Psychologically, it’s like being permanently operated on by a surgeon and you become used to the pain. You are no longer afraid. It’s masochistic,” Saryan says.
Quoting the Armenian refugee, Vice writes that Armenians built cities that reflect their Armenian culture, museums, churches, the army. The international recognition would have been a stronger guarantee of safety for Artsakh.
