Separatism has left a monstrous trail of destruction in the South Caucasus.

The renowned French photojournalist of Azerbaijani origin, Reza Degati, shared on social media the photos he had taken in Aghdam, which had been liberated from the Armenian occupation.

What the occupants and separatists from "Artsakh" have transformed the city into has shocked the journalist. He writes that Aghdam was the most beautiful city of Karabakh. The journalist came to this prosperous and beautiful city in March 1992 to photograph the facts of genocide against the population of the nearby town of Khojaly. According to him, the Armenian occupiers then killed many civilians, forcing others to leave barefoot in the winter and preventing them from retrieving their belongings.

The Armenian military occupied the city of Aghdam in 1992. They looted houses, offices, shops, cultural centres, museums and mosques, then sold doors, windows, roof beams and water pipes in Armenia and to Iranian resellers . As an architect, after forty years of experience in many war zones around the world, the journalist realised that these destructions were not the result of military action, but of deliberate looting.

"After 28 years, I returned on 21 November 2020, the day after liberation. I still feel a wave of turmoil in my mind and soul. Please share, with the hope that this will never happen again, anywhere in the world," writes Reza Degati, who called Aghdam "the Caucasian Hiroshima".

Aghdam was turned into a Hiroshima-like nuclear blast by separatism, which first emerged precisely in Azerbaijani Karabakh, when Armenian nationalists began to illegally demand the annexation of this ancestral Azerbaijani territory to Armenia and turn everything around, especially the towns and villages where Azerbaijanis lived, into desert and ruins.

But just as in Japan in 1945 the nuclear bombings were not limited to Hiroshima - a nuclear bomb was also dropped on Nagasaki - so in the South Caucasus separatism was not limited to Azerbaijani Karabakh. Separatist fires, orchestrated by the same Armenian lobby, have also spread to Georgia, the Tskhinvali region and Abkhazia.

There is also a town in Abkhazia that resembles Nagasaki after the nuclear bombing because of separatism. This is Tkvarcheli, where before the war unleashed by the separatists lived 40 thousand people, and now even according to dubious statistics the separatists have less than 4 thousand, but in reality there are at best about 1 thousand people, and entire neighbourhoods have been depopulated and are standing in ruins:

Unfortunately, the contagion of separatism in the South Caucasus has not yet been uprooted. And the Armenian lobby, as well as the unscrupulous Armenian 'Artsakh' separatists support the Sukhumi separatist regime in Abkhazia.

Recently the Kremlin and the Armenian lobby appointed Inal Ardzinba, a relative of the first so-called separatist "president" Vladislav Ardzinba as the so-called foreign minister of the separatist Abkhazia. And he was immediately congratulated on his appointment by the so-called "foreign minister" of the separatist "Artsakh" David Babayan.

 "Artsakh attaches great importance to the relations with Abkhazia. Taking into consideration many years of experience and high level of cooperation between the diplomatic departments of the "Republic of Artsakh" and "Republic of Abkhazia" I am confident that under your leadership close cooperation will continue to develop successfully in the name of the vital interests of the peoples of our states," David Babayan said.

I wonder what the "vital interests" of the Sukhumi separatists and Armenian nationalists are? Is it to turn lands and towns into deserts and ruins? After all, separatism has not brought happiness to Karabakh Armenians and Abkhazians alike. There is no doubt that it will bring many more calamities and new wars and conflicts if it is not ended.

After all, the same Armenian nationalists, including "Artsakh" separatists now look at the separatist Abkhazia as "seaside Armenia". Having suffered a complete fiasco with the annexation of Karabakh, ethnic Armenians are actively settling here and already far outnumber the Abkhazians themselves.

But they are not particularly eager to settle in "Caucasian Nagasaki" - Tkvarcheli. They actively settle in lands and houses of Georgians that were expelled from the coastal areas.  And if the separatism and the occupation of Abkhazia is mishandled, this time the threat of extermination will hang over the small Abkhazian people.

Kavkazplus