Genocide must not go unanswered: Alexey Leonkov on destroyed churches in Artsakh

Military analyst Alexey Leonkov, in an interview with Alpha News, commented on the demolition of churches in Stepanakert.

“When churches are demolished, it is always a crime. It is not merely a crime against faith, it is a crime against humanity, because temples are built as sacred places where people can come and turn to God. When they are torn down, when someone decides that a church has no right to stand, that is always a tragedy, one that gives rise to further tragedies. During the Soviet era, when most churches were demolished, religion was declared the opium of the people, obscurantism, and so forth. What did that lead to? It led to great tragedies, and then came the greatest trial of the people – the Great Patriotic War,” the expert said.

Leonkov told Alpha News that the actions of the Azerbaijani authorities constitute a form of genocide and ethnocide.

“This is not simply genocideб it is ethnocide as well, because Stepanakert and Nagorno-Karabakh, or Artsakh as it is said in Armenia, is a place where Armenians have lived for hundreds of years. When these sacred sites are erased, when cemeteries are wiped away, churches destroyed, and monuments demolished, it always means the erasure of a people, an attempt to suggest they were never there. But it lives on in memory, because temples can always be rebuilt, but only as long as the memory is kept alive. So when we say ‘genocide,’ we say it not to persecute anyone. What matters most is that it remain in people’s hearts, that they remember. Because if the memory is preserved and a destroyed church is restored, then that memory was not in vain. Genocide must not go unanswered. Those guilty of genocide and the destruction of a church are answerable either before earthly courts of law, or before the one court where judgment is most severe. There, no connections will help, no political influence, no amount of money, the reckoning will be strict. Such people end up in hell, and even the mercy of Christ will not descend upon them,” Leonkov concluded.