Lachin offensive
offensive in the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh war
The Lachin offensive (Azerbaijani: Laçına hücum əməliyyatı)
was a military operation launched by Azerbaijan against the unrecognized Republic of Artsakh and their Armenian allies along the Armenia–Azerbaijan border during the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War, with the suspected goal of taking control of the Lachin corridor. The offensive began in mid-October, when the Azerbaijani forces advanced into Qubadlı and Laçın Districts after capturing Zəngilan. On 25 October, the Azerbaijani forces seized control of the city of Qubadlı.
Background
The disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh, with its ethnic Armenian majority, is a de jure part of Azerbaijan, but is de facto held by the self-proclaimed Republic of Artsakh, which is supported by Armenia. Ethnic violence began in the late 1980s, and exploded into a war following the dissolution of the USSR in 1991. On 20 February 1988, the Soviet of the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast passed a resolution requesting transfer of the oblast from the Azerbaijan SSR to the Armenia SSR; Azerbaijan rejected the request. Following the revoking of Nagorno-Karabakh's autonomous status, an independence referendum was held on 10 December 1991 which was boycotted by the Azerbaijani population which then constituted around 22.8% of Nagorno-Karabakh's population; as a result, 99.8% voted in favor. Both Armenia and Azerbaijan then became fully independent of the Soviet Union in 1992.
The First Nagorno-Karabakh War resulted in the displacement of 750,000 Azerbaijanis overall, with roughly 600,000 of them being from Nagorno-Karabakh and the seven surrounding districts, which were majority-Azeri, essentially cleansing all of the occupied territories from its Azerbaijani inhabitants. Similarly, 353,000 Armenians had to flee from Azerbaijan.
The public source identifies “Lachin offensive” as offensive in the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh war. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Lachin, offensive and Nagorno-Karabakh.
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This entry incorporates text from “Lachin offensive” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.