The Holy Mother of God Cathedral in Khankendi
Photo: Shutterstock
The cathedral of the largest city in Azerbaijan’s Nagorno-Karabakh region has been demolished, RFE/RL can confirm through satellite imagery made on April 26.
Reports that the Holy Mother of God Cathedral in Khankendi had been destroyed emerged in Armenian media in mid-April, but no clear recent imagery showing the site was available until now.
Construction of the cathedral in Khankendi — a city known by Armenians as Stepanakert — began in 2006, and the site was consecrated in 2019.
As well as serving as the city’s main site of worship, its basement was repurposed as a bomb shelter during the conflicts with Azerbaijani forces that broke out in the 2020s.
Along with the cathedral, imagery sourced by RFE/RL confirms the Church of St. Jacob, another major Christian site in the city, has also been erased in recent weeks.
The Church of St. Jacob was completed in 2007 and was funded by an Armenian-American philanthropist in memory of his deceased son.
Armenia’s Orthodox church authorities on April 23 accused Azerbaijan of “deliberately target[ing] Armenian Christian holy sites, seeking to erase the Armenian presence,” from Nagorno-Karabakh. The church alleged cross stones in the grounds surrounding the demolished Church of St. Jacob have also been destroyed.
Elnare Akimova, a member of Azerbaijan’s parliament, told RFE/RL’s Azerbaijani service on April 22 that claims of the churches’ destruction are “a provocation by revanchist forces” to harm Baku’s image.
Akimova further claimed that her country “has preserved religious and historic monuments on its territories as a state policy. It has never had any intention to destroy any religious heritage.”
On April 24, RFE/RL spoke to a staff member at a hotel located a few meters from the cathedral. The man initially told RFE/RL by telephone he did not have any information about the status of the cathedral, then said that “everything around the hotel is present” before claiming the cathedral was still in place.
Azerbaijan’s Foreign Ministry did not respond to a request for comment for this story.
A social media post (above) from early February shows a construction-type fence surrounding the cathedral. It is believed the building was demolished by early April.
More than 100,000 ethnic Armenians fled Nagorno-Karabakh and surrounding territories amid a series of military offensives launched by Baku that culminated in Azerbaijan’s full recapture of Nagorno-Karabakh in September 2023.
The military campaigns followed decades of de-facto ethnic Armenian control of the territory and surrounding areas following the First Nagorno-Karabakh War.
The reports of the latest Christian sites destroyed in Nagorno-Karabakh have sparked controversy ahead of Armenia’s upcoming parliamentary elections as critics accuse Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian of failing to address the issue. Pashinian told reporters his government is working to get complete information on the matter but called for “prudence” in such cases.
“I do not think that, taking into account our previous experience, we will make this a subject of international discussions at the state level,” he said.
