The Lachin Kurdish Republic was self-proclaimed on 20 May, 1992, in Lachin, just two days after this area of Azerbaijan had been captured by Armenian forces and largely emptied of its population as part of the ongoing Nagorno-Karabakh War. The idea, essentially a nominal re-institution of the 1920s entity of Red Kurdistan, was floated by the Armenians for whom the Lachin corridor constituted a strategically vital link to Nagorno-Karabakh. However, the area's small Kurdish population had already fled along with the area's ethnic Azeri population - most finding refuge in other regions of Azerbaijan. Thus the Kurdish youths and intellectuals (around seventy people in total) who set up the Republic were specially transported to Lachin from Armenia in buses provided by Yerevan's municipal gover