Azerbaijanis have vandalized another Armenian monastery in Nagorno-Karabakh (Artsakh) under the guise of renovating the building, according to Raffi Kortoshyian, deputy director of the Foundation for the Study of Armenian Architecture.

“When the Monastery of Kavak in the village of Hogher, Hadrut region of Artsakh Republic came under the control of the Azerbaijani army in 1992, the vandals destroyed the construction records from 1742 attached to the entrance to the church, and now, in 2023, when the monastery is again under the control of vandals, they are "renovating" the same porch by vandalizing it,” Kortoshyian captioned a photo on Facebook Wednesday, July 26. “In the photos, the record of the entrance of the monastery before its destruction, after its destruction and after the placement of an ugly stone in its place.”

Satellite images published by the Caucasus Heritage Watch in June revealed that Azerbaijanis has destroyed the Halevor Bridge, built in the 19th century, in Artsakh’s occupied Hadrut.

Concerns about the preservation of cultural sites in Nagorno-Karabakh are made all the more urgent by the Azerbaijani government’s history of systemically destroying indigenous Armenian heritage—acts of both warfare and historical revisionism. The Azerbaijani government has secretly destroyed a striking number of cultural and religious artifacts in the late 20th century. Within Nakhichevan alone, a historically Armenian enclave in Azerbaijan, Azerbaijani forces destroyed at least 89 medieval churches, 5,840 khachkars (Armenian cross stones) and 22,000 historical tombstones between 1997 and 2006.