Azerbaijan has begun drilling and blasting work at the occupied section of the Sotk gold deposit, seized by Azerbaijani forces following the 2020 Artsakh War.
According to Azerbaijani media, state-owned mining company AzerGold has carried out its first blast at the deposit as part of preparations for large-scale mining.
A significant part of Sotk was occupied after the 2020 war, cutting Armenia off from part of the mine. In the years that followed, Azerbaijani forces repeatedly opened fire toward the Armenian-operated section, forcing evacuations and disrupting production. In May 2022, a mine worker was shot and wounded, while continued fire in 2023 led GeoProMining to suspend open-pit operations over safety concerns.
Located near the village of Sotk in Armenia’s Gegharkunik Province, the deposit is one of the largest gold deposits in the South Caucasus and has been mined since the Soviet period.
Before the 2020 war, the mine was operated by Armenia-registered GeoProMining Gold, a Russian-owned mining company, which transported ore from Sotk to the Ararat gold recovery plant for processing. The company estimated Sotk’s remaining reserves at 47.7 tons of gold as of January 2021, while the mine had an annual production capacity of around 1.75 million tons of ore. Before the 2020 war, Sotk was also a major employer, with 1,654 employees recorded at the operation in October 2020. After Azerbaijan occupied part of the deposit, employment fell sharply as mining was scaled back.
AzerGold says it has conducted 18,000 meters of drilling since August 2025 and estimates recoverable reserves in the section it controls at 1.03 million ounces of gold.
The company is now preparing for large-scale exploitation of the occupied section of Sotk.
