`Gagik Tsarukyan` fund to provide financial aid to over 200 Armenian  refugees from Artsakh  

ArmInfo.  The charitable foundation of renowned Armenian businessman Gagik Tsarukyan will provide financial support to the "Artsakh in My Heart" social and  charitable foundation to cover the utility bills of 238 Artsakh  families for December, January, and February, who became refugees as  a result of the Azerbaijani aggression in 2023.

As reported by the businessman's press service, Iveta Tonoyan, on her  Facebook page, this decision was made in response to an appeal from  Nzhdeh Iskandaryan, co-founder of the "Artsakh in My Heart" social  and charitable foundation, to Gagik Tsarukyan requesting urgent  assistance to certain groups of Artsakh residents who have found  themselves in extremely difficult social situations due to the  inability to cover utility costs. "This concerns covering the utility  costs of 238 Artsakh families of those killed and missing in the  explosion at the fuel depot in Stepanakert, as well as 22 families of  civilians killed as a result of Azerbaijani aggression on September  19-20, 2023. Since this issue is of paramount importance and requires  an urgent solution, the businessman instructed representatives of the  Gagik Tsarukyan Charitable Foundation to urgently address this  issue," Tonoyan wrote.

As a reminder, on September 19, 2023, Azerbaijan, under the pretext  of an "anti-terrorist operation," initiated a large-scale aggression  against Artsakh, which led to the complete de-Armenization of the  NKR.  This was preceded by a nearly 10-month blockade of the  unrecognized republic. Since the enemy aggression that began in the  fall of 2020, which culminated in the complete ethnic cleansing of  Artsakh in September 2023, over 150,000 Artsakh residents have lost  their homeland and become refugees.  It should be added that in  October 2023, Armenia launched a program allocating 40,000 drams  (approximately $100) per month to cover housing costs for each family  expelled from Nagorno-Karabakh by Azerbaijan, along with an  additional 10,000 drams for utilities.

However, in November 2024, the authorities announced that the  program's terms would be revised. As a result, only minor citizens of  Artsakh, as well as those officially unable to work for various  reasons, remained beneficiaries of the government program.