On July 20, 2025, President Ilham Aliyev presented to participants of the Third Global Media Forum in Shusha his plan to build a "Victory Museum" in Stepanakert (which Azerbaijan calls "Khankendi") (https://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Faqreqator.az%2Faz%2Fsiyaset%2F85574416%3Ffbclid%3DIwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTAAYnJpZBExNEhRU0FHbWZyWlJNanBPSQEebtHr-DzALOXqpL9DUJ-heyLwWxGhBDrF2nEjQ3HX5Ggsz4cwsAmp8SSBgvo_aem_D-C_XzVTU_YIL4FNql5Lhw&h=AT006KgSkhYvGZSHA6fqXX8f7WUIHZaoREMp7SE_DzYc7rAvquku70XPH4mXqwvilttSpniBxgYlCAyPzeePVmKAt58AMkl33M3f4gVgrmjFF__20Obz2ztr3ZTsAMK96aFklcP7ofA). According to the president, the museum will be housed in the building of the "former Party Committee of the Nagorno‑Karabakh Autonomous Region" – the former presidential palace of the Republic of Artsakh. During the Soviet era, this building was the administrative and political center of the entire region; later, it became one of the symbols of Artsakh's identity and self-governance.

At present, intensive construction is underway. According to open sources, the contract to design and furnish the museum has a total value of 443,920 Azerbaijani manats, equivalent to approximately US$260,000. The surrounding area has been renamed Victory Square, and the museum is to be the centrepiece of this redesigned environment.

A museum, according to global practice, should be a place for dialogue, for preserving memory, and for cooperation among cultures. In this case, however, it is being fashioned as a symbolic platform for triumph and supremacy. When a cultural institution with a humanist mission is transformed into a hall that presents a one-sided history without hearing the other side's voice, it not only fails to ease polarization—it deepens the cultural layers of the conflict. A similarly problematic example was Azerbaijan's Victory Park initiative, which was condemned by the international community and by several genocide‑prevention organisations. The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, for instance, noted that the so‑called "Trophy Park" in Baku—where caricatured mannequins representing Armenians were displayed—"creates serious concerns" and that such use of stereotypes "should have no place in a museum or society".

When memory is used as a political tool to re‑interpret sites of the past, museums lose their true mission of serving people and safeguarding their memory and dignity. A project like the one described above risks artificially erasing the Armenian memory of the site and justifying a policy of ethnic cleansing for future generations. The proper function of memory culture must be to recognize the multi-layered nature of human experience, to understand the complexity of conflicts, and to create opportunities for intercultural dialogue—not to stage a one-sided celebration of victory.