As elections approach in Armenia, the government’s efforts to normalize relations with Azerbaijan are being met with a wave of domestic populist pressure and a refusal to reckon with international legal realities. In a village that two people call by different names, history is being rewritten from below, and the consequences reach all the way to Yerevan's ballot box

The dust has long settled on the battlefields of the 2020 and 2023 conflicts, but in the corridors of power in Yerevan and the reconstructed villages of Azerbaijan’s liberated territories, a new and perhaps more complex struggle is unfolding. It is a war of narratives, where the clinical requirements of international law collide with decades of deeply entrenched national sentiment.

At the heart of the current tension is the village of Xanyurdu (known in Armenian sources as Khnatsakh). Recent reports from monitoring groups have highlighted the removal of monuments and the resettlement of Azerbaijani civilians to the area. While Armenian advocacy groups characterize these actions as a "destruction of heritage," a more neutral lens reveals a different story: the complex, often painful process of a sovereign state reasserting control over its internationally recognized borders and dismantling the political symbols of a three-decade-long occupation.

Azerbaijan resettled the village in 2025 and distributed photographs confirming the return of its population.........

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