The medieval Armenian monastery of Dadivank in Nagorno-Karabakh has been handed over to Azerbaijan’s Udi community, local papers report.

After the end of the Second Karabakh War in 2020, the Azerbaijani campaign, along with the propaganda of the appropriation of the Armenian cultural heritage, began to actively involve the Udi Christians living in Azerbaijan

According to Monuments Watch, at least from the 8th century AD the Albanian Church in the system of beliefs and rituals (including also the liturgical language) was identical to the Armenian Apostolic Church.

“Talking about the Udi religion separately is a demonstration of illiteracy or intentional propaganda. Let us note that in 1836, by the decision of the Tsarist government, the Albanian Church was abolished, and the Christian Udi communities became a part of the Shemakha Diocese of the Armenian Apostolic Church. Until the 80s of the 20th century, the Christian Udis, who called themselves “Armenians by nationality, Udis by kinship,” had no cult, religious and linguistic distinctions and differences from the Armenian Apostolic Church,” the organization says.

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.