[3] Yerevan accused Baku of publicly humiliating the memory of those killed in the war, with Armenia's ombudsman calling it a "clear manifestation of fascism".

[4] Azerbaijani Ministry of Foreign Affairs, on the other hand, stated that "this practice exists in military museums in many countries of the world" and that "Azerbaijan has every right to perpetuate its victory through parades, parks, etc".

Information that the Azerbaijani authorities would open a park filled with war trophies obtained during the last conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh in Baku appeared in February 2021.

[9] On 13 April, Baku hosted an international conference entitled "A New Outlook at the South Caucasus: Post-Conflict Development and Cooperation”, after which, 27 guests from 15 countries visited the newly opened park.

[18] Ankara-based journalist Javid Agha wrote that the wax figures of Armenian military personnel were deliberately designed to show them as "ugly and cowardly".

Referring to the demonstration in the park of wax mannequins of Armenian soldiers who participated in the war, the Ministry stated that "this practice exists in military museums in many countries of the world."

Member of the parliamentary Committee on Human Rights Zahid Oruj said that he saw nothing wrong with showcasing the trophies, and referred to military history museums found in others countries in the world.

Opposition activist Bahruz Samadov argued that the park dehumanizes Armenians and "reflects the logic of exclusion that has dominated in Azerbaijan for decades: The enemy, internal or external, must be eliminated.

"[27][28][29] Addressing the park's opening during a meeting with an EU representative, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said that "Azerbaijan's policy of Armenophobia must be condemned by the civilized world".

[31][32] In a letter to Azerbaijani president Ilham Aliyev, the Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights, Dunja Mijatović, expressed concerns over the inauguration of the park, the display of "dehumanising scenes" and wax mannequins "depicting dead and dying Armenians soldiers."

[4] On 20 May 2021, the European Parliament adopted a resolution, which condemned the park as "a glorification of violence and risks inciting further hostile sentiment, hate speech or even inhumane treatment of remaining POWs and other Armenian captive civilians, thereby perpetuating the atmosphere of hatred and contradicting any official statements on reconciliation" and urged that it be closed without delay.

Primary school-age kids on the opening day exposed to such warmongering.”[41] Thomas de Waal, a long-time commentator on the Karabakh conflict, noted that the sculptures of Armenian soldiers resemble "hook-nosed" and greedy" stereotypes that echoed anti-Semitic tropes.

[49] Bloomberg's Bobby Ghosh commented that that park is "deeply ghoulish" and that it "brings to mind the collection of helmets at the base of the "Victory Arch" in Baghdad, which Saddam claimed belonged to Iranian soldiers killed in the 1980–88 war.

"[50][51] National Interest's Michael Rubin also compared the park to the Victory Arch created under the regime of former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.

[53] In his speech at PACE Armenian politician Edmon Marukyan showed photos from the park, in one of them an "Azeri child playing playfully, innocently with a racist caricature of an Armenian soldier who is currently languishing, and likely being tortured in an Azerbaijani jail", calling it "true fascism" and declaring that the park puts Aliyev in "the list of other dictators such as Hitler and Saddam Hussein", driving parallels between what is going on in Azerbaijan now and "Iraq in the late 1980s, when another dictator [Saddam Hussein] utilized five thousand Iranian helmets of the killed soldiers extracted from the battlefield to complete the monument that he had called the “Victory Arch”.