The so-called "president" of the separatist so-called "Nagorno-Karabakh Republic" or "Artsakh" Samvel Shahramanyan on September 28, 2023 signed a decree on the official abolition of this geopolitical misunderstanding. According to the document, "Artsakh" will cease to exist as of January 1, 2024, but in fact the separatist pseudo-state no longer exists. And its so-called "citizens" are leaving the territory of Azerbaijan en masse. Although official Baku offers most of them to accept its citizenship, guaranteeing all rights, including free residence in Azerbaijan, personal security and inviolability of property.

The more than 35-year epic with "miatsum" is over. And the question arises - did the people of Nagorno-Karabakh need all this? Did they need thousands of victims, a sea of blood, so many shattered destinies and finally today's panic flight, although no one is chasing the Karabakh Hayes out of Azerbaijan? Was it impossible to live peacefully in Azerbaijan, not only in Karabakh, but also in Baku, Ganja, Sumgait, Zakatala and other cities?

Who oppressed the Hayes? What did they lack? They lived much better than the majority of the indigenous population, had better apartments, better houses, better paying jobs. No one ever blamed them for their Khayi origin. Like other peoples of Azerbaijan, they could study and communicate in their native language, develop their culture, go to their churches. And the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Region of the Azerbaijan SSR was no different from Armenia - the signs were in Khay and the conversation was in the streets.

No, it was necessary to destroy all this with a bloody adventure, to start killing and expelling the neighbors. And why? So that they could go into exile and cry out to the whole world about "genocide" and their "extraordinary suffering," which everyone is already sick of. Many nations suffer from wars and other disasters, but none of them like the Hayes, incited by their nationalists, first do mean things and then cry for pity for decades while organizing terror against people who have nothing to do with their mythical "genocide".

Nagorno-Karabakh nationalists and "Artsakh" separatists have done evil not only to Azerbaijan, to the Azerbaijani people, but also to their own, to the Nagorno-Karabakh people. They seduced other peoples into separatism by analogy with "Artsakh miatsum". First of all, Abkhazians and Ossetians, who are brothers of Georgians. And they brought these peoples to the brink of self-extermination with separatist wars and post-war devastation.

Not to mention that Hay militants themselves participated in the separatist wars in Abkhazia and Samachablo. The same battalion named after Baghramyan, the Baghramyan Battalion, distinguished itself by unheard of atrocities against the peaceful Georgian population. Is this Hay's "gratitude" to the Georgian people and Georgia for sheltering Hayes on their land for centuries? Is this their "Christian brotherhood"?

The Georgian people are not vengeful. Georgia is ready to accept its Abkhazian and Ossetian brothers who were deceived by separatists and is already doing everything for reconciliation. Abkhazians and Ossetians can receive free treatment in Georgian medical institutions, be educated in Georgian educational institutions as citizens of Georgia, receive appropriate documents and travel around the world with them. But it is time for Abkhazians and Ossetians to take steps to restore the unity of Georgia, which will inevitably happen - separatism in any form is doomed. Russia, bogged down in the Ukrainian war, is no longer in a position to support separatist projects.

The separatist pseudo-state entities in Abkhazia and the Tskhinvali region must be abolished. In this case, it would be good for the separatists in Sukhumi and Tskhinvali to take the only positive example in history of their "older brothers" - the separatists of Artsakh - and also abolish their illegal entities, preferably before January 1, 2024. And it is important to start negotiations with the Georgian authorities on reintegration. What the Azerbaijani authorities have been offering to the "Artsakh" separatists for 3 years. If the "Artsakh" separatists had listened 3 years ago, accepted Baku's proposals, disarmed their illegal formations and abolished their fake "NKR" already then, 3 years ago, nobody would have had to flee anywhere today.

Abkhazians, we should remind, in Georgia, according to the Constitution of the country, have their own legal Abkhazian Autonomous Republic and the status of their language as a state language. In a united Georgia they will have a chance for revival and development of their ethnos. The Ossetians will also have prospects.  At least, no one in Georgia will throw them into the Ukrainian war, where hundreds of Ossetians, including those from the Tskhivali region, have already died. But the annexation of Samachablo to Russia, as some separatist leaders from Tskhinvali want, will turn out to be a real genocide for the Ossetians of the region in the Ukrainian war and in other wars waged by the Kremlin for a phantom project of restoring its long-forgotten empire.

Aleksandre Zakhariadze