It said the dissolution of the group would legitimize the “ethnic cleansing carried out by Azerbaijan in Nagorno-Karabakh” during the September 2023 offensive that restored Baku’s full control over the region and forced its entire population to flee to Armenia.
The United States, Russia and France co-head the Minsk Group for over three decades, jointly drafting numerous plans to end the conflict. Although the group has been effectively moribund since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Azerbaijan has been pressing for its formal dissolution.
Armenia said until recently that this should happen simultaneously with the signing of an Armenian-Azerbaijani peace treaty. But in yet another concession to Baku, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian dropped this condition during his August 8 peace talks with Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev hosted by U.S. President Donald Trump. The talks resulted in the initialing, rather than signing, of the draft treaty.
The foreign ministers of the two South Caucasus states went on to jointly ask the OSCE to liquidate the group. France welcomed the move, while Russia has yet to react to it.
In a written appeal to OSCE member states made this week, the leading Karabakh Armenian factions expressed “grave concern” at the development.
“For decades, the Minsk Group has stood as the only internationally mandated platform for a peaceful settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict,” read the statement issued on behalf of them by Ashot Danielian, the Yerevan-based speaker of Karabakh’s legislature. “To dissolve this mechanism without consulting the elected representatives of the people for whom it was established is to disregard our voice and deny our role in the process.”
Armenia - Refugees from Nagorno-Karabakh demonstrtate in Yerevan, March 29, 2025.
“We respectfully urge all OSCE participating States to exercise their authority, including veto powers where necessary, to prevent the dismantling of this framework until robust guarantees are in place to ensure the safe and dignified return of the displaced Armenian population of Nagorno-Karabakh,” it said.
“The conflict cannot be deemed resolved while an entire population remains uprooted, deprived of its inalienable rights. Our displacement was neither voluntary nor incidental -- it resulted from siege, starvation, and military assault, actions that remain unaddressed by the international community,” added the statement.
“If the world is so indifferent and immoral that it will follow that path, we will continue to fight for other possible methods and means,” Gegham Stepanian, Karabakh’s human rights ombudsman, told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service on Friday.
Even before the Washington talks, Pashinian made clear that the Karabakh issue is closed for his administration. He dismissed calls for the Armenian government to champion the Karabakh Armenians’ right to safe repatriation in the international arena.
On Monday, Pashinian declared that the more than 120,000 Karabakh refugees should stop hoping to return to their homeland. They should instead “settle down in Armenia” and become its “full-fledged citizens,” he said.