Following a flag-burning incident, Azerbaijan announced on Saturday that it was pulling its athletes from an international weightlifting competition being held in the capital of rival Armenia. The Nagorno-Karabakh region of Azerbaijan, which has a majority of Armenians, has been the subject of a decades-long conflict between the two former Soviet Caucasus states. They engaged in two wars over the mountainous breakaway territory, the first in the 1990s and the most recent in 2020. Footage from the European Weightlifting Championships opening ceremony in Yerevan on Friday depicted a man sprinting to the stage, grabbing the flag of Azerbaijan from a flag-bearer, and burning it on fire. In a joint statement with the National Olympic Committee, the Ministry of Youth and Sports of Azerbaijan stated that it had made the decision to send its athletes home due to what it called a “barbaric act” at the ceremony.