One of them, Sergei Shahverdian, showed on Monday fresh videos of central Stepanakert posted by Azerbaijani social media users. The Karabakh capital’s imposing Holy Mother of God Cathedral was not visible in them.
“Artsakh’s Mother Cathedral at the top of Nelson Stepanian Street is missing. The same video also shows it missing from another angle,” said Shahverdian, who had served as Karabakh’s culture minister and now runs a nongovernmental organization campaigning for the preservation of the depopulated region’s cultural and spiritual heritage.
“It’s obvious that the Azerbaijanis have destroyed it,” he told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service.
The information could not be confirmed from independent sources. The Azerbaijani government has blocked independent media access to Karabakh since its recapture of the territory in 2023. Shahverdian said he is now awaiting satellite images to conclude definitively whether the cathedral has been demolished.
The cathedral was consecrated in 2019 after almost 13 years of construction. Its underground section was used by many Stepanakert residents as a bomb shelter during the 2020 Armenian-Azerbaijani war.
News of its apparent disappearance came just days after Armenian media published photographs suggesting that another, smaller Armenian church in Stepanakert has been razed to the ground. According to Lernik Hovannisian, who heads the Diocesan Council of the Artsakh Diocese of the Armenian Apostolic Church, the Azerbaijani government has been demolishing buildings in Karabakh on the grounds that they were “illegally” constructed after 1994.
“Under this guise, it was only natural that after the destruction of the Church of St. Jacob, they will also move on to the Holy Mother of God Cathedral,” said Hovannisian.
Several other Karabakh Armenian churches were already reportedly torn down after the 2020 war. Also, Baku announced in early 2022 plans to erase Armenian inscriptions from medieval Karabakh churches. The then head of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, Nadine Maenza, expressed serious concern over the decision. The European Parliament likewise condemned “the elimination of the traces of Armenian cultural heritage in the Nagorno-Karabakh region.”
The Armenian government essentially stopped accusing Baku of systematically desecrating or destroying Armenian monuments in Karabakh in 2023. It did not react to the latest indications of more church demolitions there, drawing criticism from Armenian opposition figures.
By contrast, the Armenian Church has remained vocal about the destruction of its properties in Karabakh. Its supreme head, Catholicos Garegin II, decried that during a conference hosted by the World Council of Churches (WCC) in Switzerland last May. Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian launched his controversial campaign to oust Garegin shortly after that conference.