Russian declared official language in Karabakh

The National Assembly of Nagorno-Karabakh (Artsakh) has passed the bill on granting Russian an official language status.

The measure was approved overwhelmingly, with only two out of the 31 lawmakers attending the Thursday session voting “against” and another two abstaining from casting a bellot, said Aram Harutyunyan a co-founder of the legal initiative who chairs the Standing Committee on Science, Education, Culture and Youth.

“One of the lawmakers who did not take part in the voting is a member of the Justice faction. He was not initially a co-founder of the bill and refused to be one also later. And so he did not vote. The other parliamentarian is from the Artsakh Democratic Party. Also two members of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation-Dashnaksutyun abstained from voting,” he said in comments to Tert.am on Thursday afternoon.