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October 23, 2025 11:02 CET
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Inside Nagorno-Karabakh’s ‘Surreal’ Regions 2 Years After Recapture By Azerbaijan
When Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev snipped a green ribbon to open Lachin International Airport in May 2025, it marked the third, gleaming facility of its kind to be unveiled since 2021 in regions recaptured from ethnic Armenians.
All three airports are located within less than 100 kilometers of each other and remain nearly unused amid a massive construction blitz taking place in and around Nagorno-Karabakh.
Lachin Airport photographed around the time of its official opening in May 2025.
Virtually the entire population of more than 100,000 ethnic Armenians fled the territories amid a series of military offensives launched by Baku, which culminated in Azerbaijan’s complete takeover of Nagorno-Karabakh in September 2023.
A man prays inside the war-damaged Holy Savior Cathedral in Shusha in October 2020, before the mass exodus from Nagorno-Karabakh of its ethnic Armenian population.
Nagorno-Karabakh had historically been populated by mostly ethnic Armenians, but following the breakup of the Soviet Union, was recognized as part of Azerbaijan.
Baku has touted a “great return” of Azerbaijanis who had fled the First Nagorno-Karabakh War, which broke out in the late 1980s.
A new mosque photographed in March 2025 in Azerbaijan’s recaptured Aghdara district.
Several recent photos of new facilities being opened in and around Nagorno-Karabakh released by Aliyev’s office show small crowds of people gathering to mark the events. But aerial photos from the regions are striking, in part, for the loneliness of the landscapes they capture.
A newly built village in Azerbaijan’s Lachin region photographed in May 2025.
Azerbaijani economist Toghrul Valiyev told RFE/RL that Baku claims 30,000-40,000 Azerbaijanis have returned to the regions, but he says due to tight travel restrictions in the area “it’s difficult to find the concrete data.”
A newly constructed village in Azerbaijan’s Aghdam District photographed in March 2025.
The Lachin Recreation Complex around the time of its official opening in May 2025.
Civillini told RFE/RL that the press tour passed through several security checkpoints where journalists had their documents “thoroughly inspected,” before entering.
Once inside, he says, the region had a “surreal, slightly dystopian atmosphere,” that resembled a vast construction site. “It was striking how very few people actually seemed to live there.”
A village in the Aghdam district during its official opening in May 2025.
Civillini says he saw “only a handful of other cars on the road,” adding, “there was a clear dissonance between the scale of what was being built and the apparent local needs.”
The Aghdam railway and bus station complex during its opening in May 2025.
Azerbaijani locals who had fled the First Nagorno-Karabakh War have been offered housing paid for by the state, provided they relocate to the recaptured territories permanently. Many have cited a lack of job opportunities in the region as the main obstacle to returning.
President Ilham Aliyev (left) watches a cultural performance in Susa (known to Armenians as Shushi) in September 2025.
One former resident of the Lachin region said in an interview “I would not consider moving back because I have my job here in Baku.” Other displaced rural Azerbaijanis say their villages have become unrecognizable amid the Dubai-like construction drive.
A newly restored mosque in the Aghdam district of Azerbaijan.
One former resident of Xocali village who fled in the 1990s told RFE/RL’s Azerbaijani Service that the authorities were building facilities which are “beautiful, but they are not letting us even keep one chicken. We didn’t live in Moscow, we lived in [a village],” she said.
A ‘Victory Arch’ under construction in Xankendi, the largest city in the Nagorno-Karabakh region, which was known as Stepanakert while under ethnic Armenian control.
A total expenditure of some $19.5 billion is projected to be spent on reconstruction and resettlement efforts in and around Nagorno-Karabakh.
A newly built highway that winds past a water reservoir in the Aghdara region, photographed in March 2025.
Economist Valiyev says the massive construction push is in part a way to “redistribute resources,” from the flow of petrodollars streaming into state coffers. “Before it was Baku [being rebuilt],” he said, “and now it’s Karabakh.”
