Image Source: AP News
By guest contributor Sarkis Karabashian, a student in the Security Studies Program (SSP).
As the war between Russia and Ukraine rages on, another longstanding conflict simultaneously flared up unnoticed. After a 10-month siege that held the Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh starved and without gas, electricity, or Internet, Azerbaijan launched a military offensive on September 19th, 2023.
The Nagorno-Karabakh conflict over the territory that Armenians call “Artsakh” began in 1988 when the indigenous Armenian population held a referendum and declared independence from Azerbaijan. This bloody war ended in 1994 with a ceasefire brokered by Russia, with the Armenian population remaining in the internationally unrecognized Republic of Artsakh. For the Armenians of Artsakh, this ceasefire was a victory of survival achieved by sheer grit and resourcefulness, aided by the high-ground advantage of its mountainous terrain. Since 1994, the ceasefire has been broken by countless instances of small arms engagements and artillery strikes akin to trench warfare seen in World War I. However, the technological asymmetries witnessed in Azerbaijan’s offensive assault against Artsakh in 2016, using modern Unmanned Aerial Systems (UASs), foreshadowed what was to come. In 2020, these asymmetries manifested in the form of air dominance of the skies over the region by Azerbaijan. This dominance was displayed in the deployment of recon and loitering munitions, which successfully offset the Armenian forces’ advantage.
Despite guarantees from the Russian brokered agreement of 2020, Azerbaijani forces successfully launched a full-scale offensive military against the Armenians of Artsakh last year after a nine-month siege of starvation and deprivation of basic necessities. After 24 hours, the leadership of the Republic of Artsakh declared its surrender. Fearing the horrors of the retributive nature of the tyrannical Azerbaijani regime, 120,000 Armenians, virtually the entire population of Artsakh, fled to Armenia en masse.
As an American Armenian, the violent persecution and ultimate loss of the Artsakhi homeland, livelihoods, and property deeply troubled me. In an environment marred by disinformation and scant reporting, I set out to find first-hand the conditions that led to the breakdown and surrender of Artsakh since the Armenian forces managed, against all odds, to resist Azerbaijan’s attacks even as Russia had promised protection in the 2020 ceasefire agreements.
In December 2023, I traveled to Armenia’s southern region, Syiunik, to help Christian missionaries who were aiding refugee families in the area. During my time in Syiunik, I conducted six interviews with two women and four men, ranging in age from 25 years to 65. The displaced Artsakhi people’s first-hand accounts revealed five critical factors that led to the surrender of the Republic of Artsakh: The Armenians of Artsakh were starved, exponentially outnumbered, out-gunned, and were abandoned by Russia.
Strangled by Silence: The Chokehold of the Lachin Corridor Blockade
First, sources attributed the surrender to the blockade of the Lachin Corridor, the one road Artsakh relied on for virtually all of its supplies. One source noted the lack of food was a critical component of the willingness to fight. “By month 6, we had barely anything. We would get one loaf of bread per family.” Another source mentioned, “Basic necessities were scarce! The cost of everything became unaffordable because of how scarce even items like sugar and salt became.” When asked if there was any plan to attack the Azerbaijani military personnel who were guarding the Lachin Corridor, the response was unanimous and hopeless. “We discussed doing this many times but came to the conclusion every time that if we were to attack, then Azerbaijan would use it as justification to attack the civilian areas; We knew they wanted this.” When asked why the Russian peacekeepers, who were responsible for maintaining the free passage of the Lachin Corridor, did not intervene, one respondent noted, “the only time any supply vehicle was permitted was when the initial contingent of peacekeepers negotiated with the Azeris. These peacekeepers were older and more experienced, but they were eventually replaced with younger, less experienced ones who were unable to negotiate.”
One man recalled, “There was a case when the Azeris cut the power supply, the civilian worked went to repair the line after the peacekeepers negotiated safe conditions with the Azeris to make the repairs, and when the Armenian repairman went to repair the power line, an Azeri soldier approached with a gun and executed him in the presence and sight of the Russian peacekeepers, and they did nothing. Several days later, after realizing there would be no consequences for the killer, the brother of the repairman threw a grenade (pipebomb) at the Azeri checkpoint, he was detained and let go, but there were many other cases like this. For instance, there were sportsmen in a Red Cross vehicle detained and abducted by Azeris in the presence of Russian peacekeepers, which is a violation of international law. The Russians just watched as all these things happened.”
The overall sentiment from the interviewees was that the Russian peacekeepers were either cooperating with the Azeris or had no real control over the Lachin Corridor despite the conditions of the ceasefire agreement. The blockade of the Lachin Corridor left the Armenians of Artsakh in a dire state and destroyed any possibility of a prolonged resistance.
Facing the Onslaught: A New Era of Azerbaijani Military Power
Second, both a high-ranking military official and a reconnaissance officer indicated a fundamental difference in the number of Azerbaijani infantry deployed in September 2023 compared to the amount observed in the 2020 war. The high-ranking military official revealed that on September 19th, “The [Azeris] came with four times as many troops as they did in 2020. We saw vast amounts of troops, armor, and drones. They were prepared to finish us.” A reconnaissance officer notes, “[The Azeri troops] were noticeably better organized than they seemed in the 2020 war. I saw Turkish officers leading them. They were marching in columns like fascists, chanting and alert.” Another detail derived from the interviews was the perspective between the young and old Armenian soldiers.
An 18-year-old former soldier depicted, “[The younger soldiers] were sent to areas far from the front and separate from the older veterans. We were waiting for orders, and when we were notified of the surrender, we debated whether we should disobey these orders. We ultimately decided not to fight.” The accounts show the older generation foresaw the likelihood of defeat and did what they could to protect the young soldiers from annihilation.
Under Siege: The Military Disparity and Drones’ Deadly Dance in Artsakh
Third, sources revealed the decision to surrender was influenced by the stark contrast (disparity) between the weapons the Artsakh Defense Forces and the Azerbaijani military possessed. Every interview revealed similar realities about the state of the Armenian arsenal. Every respondent noted that they had no weapons to strike adversary drones. When asked how they dealt with drones, one respondent said, “If we were able to see [the drone], we would shoot at it [with our Kalashnikovs] and hope to hit it… we would usually hear the drones but rarely see them.” When asked further about how much ammunition it required to destroy it, one of the former soldiers revealed that he was solely given one magazine for his rifle. In conclusion, sources suggest that the overall supply the Armenians of Artsakh possessed was nothing close to what was needed to put up any sort of meaningful resistance.
Perhaps the most critical aspect of this disparity was Artsakh’s inability to defend against Azerbaijani drones. During an interview with a high-level military official, he revealed that before September 19th, “the Russians told us that they had struck a deal with the Azeris guaranteeing that the airspace would be clear.” This was either a bald-faced lie or a deal that was unhonored. Regardless, sources noted that they saw “thousands of drones in the sky over [them] and knew [they] didn’t stand a chance.” The Armenians had no means of countering drone attacks. One of the soldiers interviewed who had survived a kamikaze-style attack from a loitering munition recounted, “All of a sudden, my men and I heard a loud buzzing sound. We started to run for cover, and then everything went black. I was one of the few lucky ones who woke up in the hospital.” As noted by many in the media and by countless veterans of the 2016 and 2020 wars, Azerbaijan’s use of drones and Artsakh’s inability to procure counter-drone systems severely impacted the ultimate outcome of this conflict.
Forsaken Guardians: The Role of Russian Peacekeepers in Artsakh’s Fall
Finally, sources pointed to Russia’s complicity and cooperation with Azerbaijan as contributing to surrender. After the war in 2020, Russian peacekeepers were tasked with the responsibility of managing the flow of transport through the Lachin Corridor.
Every interviewer, when asked about the actions taken by Russian peacekeepers during the 9-month siege of the Lachin Corridor, acknowledged that the “Russians did nothing… they stood by as we starved.” When asked why the peacekeepers did not intervene, the resounding conclusion was that Russia, because of its commitment to the war in Ukraine, was unable to act on its commitments tangibly and made an agreement with Azerbaijan, allowing it to cleanse the land of its Armenian population ethnically. When recounting the evacuation, one respondent mentioned, “From how the Azeri soldiers interacted with the Russian peacekeepers, it was clear who was in charge. The Azeris would mock both us and them, exclaiming, ‘This is our land, and its name is Karabakh!’” Although the reality of Russian complicity and cooperation can be easily deduced from reading the news, the details that interviewees revealed in their perspective further solidifies the damning reality that the Russians abandoned their commitment as peacekeepers and, in doing so, abandoned their credibility to the broader Armenian population as a long time security partner.
Overall, insights gleaned from these interviews underscore several critical realities: The blockade of the Lachin Corridor triggered a humanitarian crisis, sapping the strength of Armenian resistance. Azerbaijan’s overwhelming numerical advantage left little room for effective opposition. Leveraging drones and loitering munitions sourced from Israel, Azerbaijan surmounted geographical barriers and gained vital intelligence against the Artsakh Defense Forces. Russia’s withdrawal from its peacekeeping role saw Armenians endure ten months of starvation, culminating in their defeat. Consequently, Armenians in Artsakh faced a stark choice: resist and face certain massacre, or surrender and preserve life and liberty, albeit with only meager possessions.