The city of Lachin in Azerbaijan has received the status of the cultural capital of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) in 2025.
This announcement was made by the Russian President Vladimir Putin at a meeting of the CIS Heads of State Council in Moscow on Tuesday.
"Every year we choose the cultural capital of the Commonwealth, which becomes the center of bright, creative, and humanitarian events that attract the keen interest of citizens of all our countries. Now it is Samarkand, and next year, by the project solution proposed for our approval, the baton will be taken by Azerbaijan's Lachin,” he said.
In 2024, the city of Samarkand in Uzbekistan served as the cultural capital of the CIS.
"The city of Lachin in the East Zangezur region of Azerbaijan has been declared the cultural capital of the CIS for 2025. Lachin is one of the cities of Azerbaijan that was under Armenian occupation for almost 30 years and was almost completely destroyed. Today, the town of Lachin has already been restored. A new life has started there, and former IDPs have returned,” said President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev at the meeting.
"The declaration of Lachin as the cultural capital of the CIS was received with great gratitude both by the natives of Lachin and the entire Azerbaijani nation,” he added.
Lachin will be the second city in the liberated territories of Azerbaijan to serve as a cultural capital of an interstate organization. In 2023, the city of Shusha in the Karabakh (Garabagh) region was honored as the cultural capital of the Turkic world upon the collective decision of the TURKSOY organization.
Lachin, one of the largest districts in Azerbaijan spanning an area of 1,800 square kilometers, was occupied by Armenia's armed forces on May 18, 1992, connecting the occupied Karabakh region of Azerbaijan to Armenia.
The two South Caucasus neighbor countries Armenia and Azerbaijan have been at odds since the late 1980s with the dramatic rise in anti-Azerbaijan sentiments in Armenia, at the center of which stood Armenia's illegal claims for Azerbaijan's historic Karabakh region. Following the Soviet Union’s dissolution in 1991, Armenia kicked off a full-blown military aggression against Azerbaijan. The bloody war until a ceasefire in 1994 saw Armenia occupying 20 percent of Azerbaijan’s internationally recognized territories. Over 30,000 ethnic Azerbaijanis were killed, and one million others were forced to leave their homes.
As a result of the Armenian aggression in Lachin, 264 people were killed, 65 were taken hostage, 103 became disabled. Additionally, 18 out of the 24,374 children in the district aged from one to 16 became martyrs, 225 were wounded, 1,071 children lost one, and 31 children lost both parents. Internally displaced persons (IDPs) from the Lachin district were accommodated in 59 other cities and districts of Azerbaijan. As a result of the occupation of the Lachin district, 217 cultural centers, 142 health facilities, 133 offices and enterprises, 100 secondary schools, preschool institutions, five musical schools, one boarding school, one vocational school, and one communication center were looted and destroyed by Armenia's forces.
The conflict in the Karabakh region of Azerbaijan spiraled on September 27, 2020, after Armenia's forces deployed in the occupied Azerbaijani lands started shelling the military positions and civilian settlements of Azerbaijan. Azerbaijani army took immediate counter-offensive measures to push back Armenia's attack. Azerbaijani army liberated over 300 settlements, including the cities of Jabrayil, Fuzuli, Zangilan, Gubadli, and Shusha, from a nearly 30-year-long illegal Armenian occupation. The war ended in a tripartite statement signed on November 10, 2020, by Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Russia. Under the statement, Armenia also returned the occupied Aghdam, Kalbajar, and Lachin districts to Azerbaijan, all of which are internationally recognized territories of Azerbaijan.
The Lachin district was the last of the three areas returned by Armenia to Azerbaijan as part of its obligations under the tripartite statement. The larger portion of it, except the city of Lachin and the villages of Zabukh and Sus, was returned to Azerbaijan on December 1, 2020, after 28 years of illegal Armenian occupation.
Under the tripartite agreement, the 5-kilometer-wide Lachin route, including the city of Lachin and two surrounding Zabukh and Sus villages, was initially monitored by Russian peacekeepers temporarily stationed in parts of Azerbaijan’s Karabakh region. Control of Lachin and the two villages was to be returned to Azerbaijan once a new highway connecting Karabakh’s Armenian residents to Armenia became operational. In August 2022, after completing the new road, Azerbaijan reclaimed control over Lachin and the surrounding villages, restoring full sovereignty over the district. Since then, the Azerbaijani government has launched a comprehensive restoration campaign in Lachin, and President Aliyev declared August 26 as "Lachin City Day" to commemorate this achievement.
In 2023 and 2024, some of the former residents of the Lachin city, as well as the Zabukh and Sus villages returned to their homeland as part of the state-run “Great Return” program.