Armenian parliamentary speaker Alen Simonyan has once again presented Yerevan’s familiar narrative: that the government is “doing everything” to secure the return of Armenians held in Azerbaijan. With confident language, he claimed that all detainees will eventually be brought home, pointing to the decrease in numbers since 2020 as proof that the government’s efforts are working. Simonyan even suggested that former separatist figures, including those who once held leadership roles in the self-proclaimed structure in Khankandi, would eventually return to Armenia.

This message is crafted to instill hope, yet it relies on a terminology that fundamentally distorts reality. Armenian officials and media insist on calling these individuals “prisoners of war,” even though none of them were captured on the battlefield. They were not soldiers detained with weapons in their hands. They were the political and military elite of a separatist entity that operated illegally within Azerbaijan’s internationally recognized........

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