Stepanakert has offered Baku to exchange the Azerbaijani paintings it has with the ones left in the Shushi State Museum of Fine Arts. The Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh) Minister of Education, Science, Culture and Sport, Lusine Gharakhanyan, stated this at a press conference in Stepanakert, Sputnik Armenia reports.

"After the first Artsakh war [in the early 1990s], 40 Azerbaijani paintings came under the control of the Armenian side. For 30 years, the Azerbaijani side did not even try to take back those paintings. This describes them well, doesn't it? Now we have conveyed our proposal [to them], but we have not received an answer yet. What can I say, they are a people who do not appreciate culture, do not create culture, and do not preserve [it]," the minister added.

A number of valuable Armenian paintings are left in the gallery of Artsakh’s Shushi, which is now under Azerbaijani occupation. Gharakhanyan noted that in exchange for these paintings, Artsakh "has nothing else to exchange” with Baku “except for the 40 Azerbaijani paintings."

Artsakh's aforesaid proposal was passed to the Azerbaijani authorities through Russian peacekeepers.