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12 September 2017

By Elmira Tariverdiyeva – Trend

Reuters, in an article dedicated to today’s UEFA Champions League match between Azerbaijan’s Qarabag FK and England’s Chelsea, has taken a closer look at the Azerbaijani football club’s history, calling its hometown of Aghdam a symbol of Armenia’s occupation in the fierce Nagorno-Karabakh war.

“When they [Qarabag] take to the field to play English champions Chelsea on Tuesday to become the first club from Azerbaijan to play in the tournament proper, it will mark an incredible journey for a club caught up in war in the 1990s,” reads the Reuters article.

“Even now their home town of Aghdam is a shell, a legacy of occupation and bombing by forces from neighboring Armenia in the fierce Nagorno-Karabakh war of the 1980s and 1990s, and their Imarat Stadium is reduced to rubble.”

“They play their home games 440 km away in the capital Baku but despite being uprooted the club remains a great source of pride for Azerbaijan with most of the national team being made up of Qarabag players,” says the Reuters article.

For many years, Yerevan on all international platforms has been trying to spread false claims about the “independence” of the Armenian-occupied Nagorno-Karabakh region. Armenia, using its propaganda resources abroad, its national lobby and diaspora organizations, has been promoting a myth that Karabakh is “an Armenian land”.

But today, the matches of Azerbaijan’s Qarabag FK in the UEFA Champions League inflict an irreparable damage to the Armenian propaganda machine.

Further victories of the Qarabag FK can help present a broader coverage of occupation of Azerbaijani territories, and after the UEFA Champions League matches even more people around the world will surely know that Karabakh is a region of Azerbaijan and will not succumb to the primitive provocations of Armenian propagandists.