Azerbaijan calls for sanctions over tennis player's pro-Armenia messages at the Australian Open | CNN
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CNN — Azerbaijan’s tennis federation has called for Karen Khachanov to be sanctioned after the Russian player expressed support for the Armenian-majority population living in the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region at the Australian Open. Khachanov, who has Armenian heritage, has written “Artsakh stay strong” on TV cameras after matches in Melbourne. Artsakh is the Armenian term for the breakaway state of Nagorno-Karabakh, an ethnic Armenian-majority region located in Azerbaijani territory that has been the focus of decades of conflict . Armenian forces took control of large swathes of territory in and around Nagorno-Karabakh in the early 1990s; fighting then flared intermittently until 2020, when Azerbaijan seized control over large parts of those territories during a bloody, six-week war. “I have Armenian roots,” Khachanov told reporters after his quarterf...