[5][6][7] The reservoir's water level is maintained by the dam of the Mingachevir Hydro Power Plant, built near Mount Bozdağ from 1945 to 1953.

[11] Within the context of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, scholars and politicians have speculated the possibility of the Mingachevir reservoir being used as a military target by Armenian forces.

Russian ethnographer Sergey Arutyunov stated in a 2010 interview:[12] In the aftermath of the 2014 Armenian–Azerbaijani clashes, Armenia's Defense Minister Seyran Ohanyan stated at the government session on August 7 that the Troops of the Civil Defense of the Azerbaijani Ministry of Emergency Situations have recently been mainly protecting the Mingachevir Hydro Power Plant fearing an attack by the Armenian forces.

[15] Telman Zeynalov, president of the National Center of Environmental Forecasting, said in an interview that the entire area from Arran (i.e. the great triangle of land, lowland in the east but rising to mountains in the west, formed by the junction of the rivers Kura and Aras)[16] to Baku, the Azerbaijani capital, would be flooded if Mingachevir Dam was destroyed.

[17] The latter claim was rejected by Armenian analyst Hrant Melik-Shahnazaryan who stated that the waters of the Mingachevir reservoir cannot possibly reach the highlands of Karabakh.