Stepanakert, or Khankendi, is a city in the Nagorno-Karabakh region of Azerbaijan. The city was under the control and the capital city of the breakaway Republic of Artsakh prior to the 2023 Azerbaijani offensive in the region. The city is located in a valley on the eastern slopes of the Karabakh mountain range, on the left bank of the Karkar/Gargarchay River.
The area that would become Stepanakert was originally an Armenian settlement named Vararakn. The city became a hotbed for political activity, serving as the center for Armenian demonstrations calling for the unification of Nagorno-Karabakh with Armenia. Stepanakert suffered extensive damage following the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the outbreak of the First Nagorno-Karabakh War and passed into the hands of local Armenians with the establishment of the Republic of Artsakh. During the Soviet and Artsakh periods, the city was a regional center of education and culture, being home to Artsakh University, musical schools, and a palace of culture. The economy was based on the service industry and had varied enterprises, food processing, wine making, and silk weaving being the most important.
Following the 2023 Azerbaijani offensive in Nagorno-Karabakh, Azerbaijani authorities took control of Stepanakert, which resulted in the expulsion of the Armenian population of the city, as well as the Nagorno-Karabakh region as a whole. Stepanakert was an abandoned ghost city until Azerbaijan began settling new residents in September 2024 with the opening of Karabakh University.
Etymology
Medieval Armenian sources attest to a settlement in the locale called Vararakn ().
Most Azerbaijani sources claim that the settlement was built in late 18th century, as a place of rest for the heads of the Karabakh Khanate. In the first years, it was known as "Khan's village" () because only the khan's family and his relatives lived there. By the 19th century, the settlement was renamed Khankendi ("village of the khan" in Azerbaijani). after Armenian Bolshevik revolutionary Stepan Shahumian. The name is formed from the words Stepan () and kert (). From the 10th–16th centuries, the settlement was a part of the Armenian Principality of Khachen. Over the centuries, it would successively pass into the hands of the meliks of Karabakh and the Karabakh khans before coming under the control of the Russian Empire in 1822. in the village to reconcile with the Persians and ensure the safety of the Karabakh Armenian population. In 1847, Vararakn was a village of about 132 houses, consisting of 80 Armenian households, 52 Russian households, an Armenian church, and a cemetery. That same year, the village was renamed from Vararakn to Khankendi. By 1886, there were 52 houses in the settlement. The population of Khankendi consisted of retired soldiers and their descendants, who belonged to the Russian Orthodox Church. The population was engaged in agriculture, as well as various crafts, carriage, the renting of apartments (mainly to military personnel), and so on. After 1898, the tsarist government turned Khankendi into a Russian military garrison. The garrison consisted of barracks, hospitals, and a church, as well as several houses where officers' families and a small local population, who supplied the military units with food, lived. The local population consisted of Armenians and Azerbaijanis.
In February 1920, after a body thought to be of an Azerbaijani soldier was found, an anti-Armenian riot took place in the village that claimed several hundred lives. Following the massacre of the Armenian population of Shusha in March 1920, the city received an influx of Armenians; as a result, Armenians formed the majority of the population from that time onwards. In the summer of 1920, the city was occupied by part of the Red Army. In time, Stepanakert grew to become the region's most important city (a status it received in 1940). Its population rose from 10,459 in 1939 to 33,000 in 1978. This square, then named after Lenin, became the arena of many rallies demanding the transfer of the NKAO to the Armenian SSR. By 1968, the first outbreak of ethnic violence occurred in Stepanakert. In the city, a trial was held over an Azerbaijani director of the city school who was accused of murdering an Armenian girl. The Armenians, who considered the verdict of the Azerbaijani judge too lenient, gathered outside the court building and burned the car which the criminal and judge were in.
Stepanakert served as Nagorno-Karabakh's main economic hub, and by the mid-1980s there were nineteen factories in operation in the city, including an electrical and asphalt plant.
Relations between Stepanakert's Armenians and Azerbaijanis, who supported the Azerbaijani government's position, deteriorated in the following years. Inter-ethnic strife in the city in September 1988, encompassing physical attacks and burning of property, forced nearly all Azerbaijanis to flee the city. The Soviet Army took up positions in the city and announced a curfew three days later. In 1990 the army dispatched special forces units and various other elements to Stepanakert in order to prevent its takeover by Azerbaijani forces.
After Azerbaijan declared its independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, Stepanakert was renamed Khankendi by the Azerbaijani government. Fighting broke out over control of Nagorno-Karabakh, which, after three years of war, resulted in Armenian control of the region and a connecting corridor to Armenia to the west. Prior to the conflict, Stepanakert was the largest city of the NKAO, with a population of 70,000 out of a total 189,000 (Armenians at the time comprised 75% of the region's total population). By early 1992, that figure had dropped to 50,000.
thumb|A [[T-72 tank memorial from the First Karabakh War.]]
During the war, the city suffered immense damage from Azerbaijani bombardment, especially in early 1992 when the Azerbaijanis positioned BM-21 Grad rocket artillery in Shusha and rained down missiles over Stepanakert. A journalist for Time noted in an April 1992 article that "scarcely a single building [had] escaped damage in Stepanakert." As of 2016, the city had not been completely restored from the war. As Azerbaijani forces advanced on the city of Shusha, the Lachin corridor was shut down by Artsakh authorities.
With Azerbaijani forces from the capital, a ceasefire agreement was signed on 10 November. As part of the agreement, Russian peacekeepers were deployed to the region. Following the war, the population of Stepanakert swelled to 75,000 residents as a result of some 10,000 to 15,000 displaced people who lost their homes elsewhere in the Republic of Artsakh during the war. Azerbaijani police vehicles began patrolling the area on 29 September and the Azerbaijani flag was placed on the city's We Are Our Mountains monument. Azerbaijan took over responsibility for medical services in the city and its area was covered by the Azerbaijani mobile networks. An Al Jazeera news crew reported from the city later that day, showing deserted streets in what the reporter described as "A ghost town with no soul left".
After the offensive and Armenian exodus, sources reported that Azerbaijani authorities issued a map of Stepanakert renaming one of the streets after Enver Pasha, one of the main perpetrators of the Armenian genocide. An Azerbaijani official disputed this during a case at the International Court of Justice, saying that "No streets in Khankandi have been renamed".
President Ilham Aliyev visited the city on 15 October and officially raised the flag of Azerbaijan at the building that was previously used as the Artsakh Presidential Palace.
In December 2023, the first football match since the resumption of Azerbaijani control was played between MOIK Baku and Qarabağ FK from Aghdam in the Azerbaijan Cup.
In the following months, Azerbaijani authorities dismantled monuments symbolizing Artsakh, including the Giant Cross and the Eagle Monument, and statues of prominent Armenians in the city, among them, Stepan Shahumyan (after whom Stepanakert is named), Charles Aznavour and Alexander Myasnikyan.
In early March 2024, Azerbaijani authorities demolished the National Assembly of Artsakh Building and the Artsakh Freedom Fighters Union Building. In November 2024, reports emerged that Azerbaijan demolished the historical Armenian center of the city.
Culture and economy
Pre-2023
thumb|[[Holy Mother of God Cathedral, Stepanakert|Cathedral of the Holy Mother of God (consecrated in 2019, demolished in 2026) It is widely regarded as a symbol of the Armenian heritage of the historic Artsakh. After the independence of Armenia, many cultural and youth centres were reopened. The cultural palace of the city was named after Charles Aznavour.
Stepanakert was home to the Mesrop Mashtots Republican Library opened in 1924, Artsakh History Museum opened in 1939, Hovhannes Tumanyan Children's Library opened in 1947, Stepanakert National Gallery opened in 1982, and the Memorial Museum of the Martyred Liberators opened in 2002. A new cultural complex of the Armenian heritage of Artsakh was under construction.
The Artsakh State Museum, based in Stepanakert, had an important collection of ancient artifacts and Christian manuscripts.
Education
thumb|The Union of Artsakh Freedom Fighters (pictured 2014, demolished in 2024)
Stepanakert was the center of higher education in Artsakh.
- Stepanakert campus of the Armenian National Agrarian University.
- Grigor Narekatsi University (private).
- Mesrop Mashtots University (private). Existing schools were also renovated with donations from the diaspora.
The Stepanakert branch of Tumo Center for Creative Technologies was opened in September 2015, as a result of continued cooperation between the Tumo Centre and the Armenian General Benevolent Union, with the support of mobile operator Karabakh Telecom.
Sport
Football was a popular sport in Nagorno-Karabakh and the city has a renovated football stadium. Since the mid-1990s, football teams from Karabakh started taking part in some domestic competitions in Armenia. Lernayin Artsakh is the football club that represents the city of Stepanakert. The Artsakh national football league was launched in 2009.
The non-FIFA affiliated Artsakh national football team was formed in 2012 and played their first competitive match against the unrecognized Abkhazia national football team in Sukhumi on 17 September 2012. The match ended with a 1–1 draw. The following month, on 21 October 2012, Artsakh played the return match at the Stepanakert Republican Stadium against Abkhazia, winning it with a result of 3–0.
There was also interest in other sports, including basketball and volleyball.
Artsakh athletes also took part with the representing teams and athletes in the Pan-Armenian Games, organized in Armenia.
As an unrecognized entity, the athletes of Artsakh competed in international sports competitions under the flag of Armenia. The letter was sent to then-California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, who deferred the letter to Montebello mayor Bill Molinari since it concerned a local, not a state, issue. Molinari responded to Pashayev that the city would go ahead with its plans to inaugurate Stepanakert under the sister city program.
- Mairiporã, Brazil: Since 18 June 2018, Law 3767/18 has made Eternal Armenia the name that declares Sister Cities the Municipalities of Mairiporã, State of São Paulo, and Stepanakert, capital of the self-declared Nagorno-Karabakh Republic which triggered an alert from Itamaraty, Brazilian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, on the attitude of the Municipality as Brazil does not recognize the independence of Nagorno-Karabakh.
Friendship declarations
- On 22 May 1998, Stepanakert and the commune of Villeurbanne in France signed a Friendship Declaration.
- On 28 September 2012, Stepanakert and Yerevan, Armenia, the capitals of the two Armenian republics, became friends after signing a partnership agreement.
- On 15 September 2014, San Sebastián, Spain, and Stepanakert signed a cooperation agreement.
- On 17 May 2015, Stepanakert and the commune of Valence in France signed a Friendship Declaration.
Religion
The late-19th-century church of Vararakn was destroyed in the 1930s to build the Stepanakert Drama Theatre. Throughout the rest of the Soviet era, there were no traditional churches in Stepanakert, although most of the population of the city were members of the Armenian Apostolic Church.
The church of Surp Hakob (or Saint James) was opened in 2007; it remained the only open church in the city until 2019. The church was financed by Nerses Yepremian from Los Angeles. The church was consecrated on 9 May 2007, in honor of the 15th anniversary of the capture of Shusha by Armenian forces.
The construction of the Holy Mother of God Cathedral was launched on 19 July 2006. The cost of the project was expected to be around US$2 million and the architect of the church is Gagik Yeranosyan. However, the construction process was slow due to a lack of financial resources. The inauguration of the church was expected to take place in September 2016. Construction finished and the church was opened in 2019.
There was small community of Armenian Evangelicals with around 500 members. The only Armenian evangelical church in Artsakh was located in Stepanakert. The Evangelical community supported many schools, hospitals and other institutions through the help of the Armenian Diaspora.
The Holy Mother of God Cathedral and Saint James' Church were demolished in 2026 by Azerbaijan.
Economy
thumb|Stepanakert Bazaar (Shuka) (2020)
The city was a regional center of education and culture, being home to Artsakh University, musical schools, and a palace of culture. The economy was based on the service industry and has varied enterprises, food processing, wine making, and silk weaving being the most important. In the years following, the economy was developed further, mainly due to investments from the Armenian diaspora. However, following the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh war, the economy once again experienced severe damage, particularly in the tourism sector.
The most developed sectors of Stepanakert and the rest of the Republic of Artsakh are tourism and services. Several hotels were opened by diasporan Armenians from Russia, the United States and Australia. Artsakhbank was the largest banking services provider in Artsakh, while Karabakh Telecom was the leading provider of mobile telecommunications and other communication services.
Stepanakert was also home to many large industrial firms, including Stepanakert Brandy Factory, Artsakh Berry food products and Artsakh Footwear Factory.
Construction was also one of the leading sectors in the city. Artsakh Hek is the leading construction firm, while Base Metals was the leader in mining and production of building materials.
Post-2023
Education
Karabakh University opened in September 2024, with its students and staff becoming the first residents of the city since the expulsion of the city's ethnic Armenian population in 2023.
Geography and climate
Stepanakert is located on the Karabakh plateau, at an average altitude of above sea level.
The city has a humid subtropical climate (Cfa) according to the Köppen climate classification system and an oceanic climate (Do) according to the Trewartha climate classification system. In the month of January, the average temperature drops to . In July, it averages around . Extreme temperatures ranged from on 8 January 1974, to on 11 July 1978.
Politics and government
During the period of the USSR, Stepanakert served as the capital of the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast within the Azerbaijani Soviet Socialist Republic, between 1923 and 1991. With the self-declared independence of Artsakh in 1991, Stepanakert continued with its status as the political and cultural centre of the newly established republic, being home to all the national institutions: the Government House, the National Assembly, the Presidential Palace, the Constitutional Court, all ministries, judicial bodies and other government organizations. The most recent mayor was Davit Sargsyan.
Government buildings
<gallery mode="packed" heights="140">
2014 Stepanakert, Plac Odrodzenia (02).jpg|The National Assembly (demolished in 2024)
2014 Stepanakert, Budynek Ministerstwa Spraw Zagranicznych Republiki Górskiego Karabachu (02).jpg|The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (demolished in 2025)
2014 Stepanakert, Budynek rządowy Republiki Górskiego Karabachu.jpg|Government building, 20 February Street
</gallery>
Demographics
{| class="wikitable" style="float:right; clear:right; margin-left:1em; text-align:right; font-size:88%;"
|-
! rowspan="2" | Year
! scope="col" colspan=2 style="width:80px; text-align: right;" | Armenians
! scope="col" colspan=2 style="width:80px; text-align: right;" | Azerbaijanis