In the most significant moment of the conflict that erupted in September over the mountains and heavily militarized area, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev announced on Sunday that his forces had taken Shusha, whose city is sometimes described as “Nagorno-Karabakh’s Jerusalem” for its religious significance. .
Azerbaijan’s Defense Ministry on Monday released a video showing the country’s national flag flying over public buildings in the city, with Azerbaijani troops just miles away from the regional capital, Stepancart. The video shows desert streets and damaged buildings.
Shusha – or Shushi as it is known to the Armenians – is located about 10 kilometers south of Stepnecart and is on high ground, which makes the capital more sensitive. It has already faced regular rocket and missile attacks and many civilians fled to Armenia over the weekend.
The first Armenian acknowledgment of the drought came on Monday from Nagorno-Karabakh presidential spokesman Vahram Pg Gossian. He posted on Facebook that “the city is completely out of our control and all sorts of encouraging or inspiring propaganda[es] Give us nothing but a sense of reality. “The enemy is in the vicinity of Stepan aker Kurt and now the very existence of the capital city is in jeopardy,” he added. “
Shortly afterwards, however, Armenian Prime Minister Nicole Pashinyan wrote in a one-line post on Facebook: “The fight for Shushi continues.” “We will fight the enemy to the end,” Nagorno-Karabakh president Ariak Harutyunyan said on Facebook, without specifically mentioning Shusha.
Armenian authorities have not officially confirmed that Shusha has fallen. By the end of Sunday, Defense Ministry officials continued that the fighting was ongoing.
Pogohosyan made an appeal to Armenia in his Facebook post: “If you want Shushi to be ours again, and Artzakh [the Armenian name of Nagorno-Karabakh] To save, today we have to use all the capabilities to organize the defense of the stepneckert and all the directions of the frontline. “
Videos posted on social media on Sunday showed convoys of cars leaving Stepnecart, but reports from the city say many civilians remained there.
Hours after Azerbaijan’s Defense Ministry posted the Shusha video online online, the Russian Defense Ministry said a Russian military helicopter had been shot down over Armenia near the Azerbaijani border.
The ministry said the helicopter was brought down from a portable surface using an air missile, adding that two crew members were killed and a third was taken to the airspace with injuries when the MI-24 crashed in a mountainous area of Armenia.
“The liberation of Shusha also indicates that the liberation of the remaining occupied territories is imminent,” Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, a vocal supporter of Azerbaijan, said at a rally in the Turkish city of Kokayli on Sunday.
In a call with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Saturday, Erdogan said in a report reading the Turkish presidential call that Armenia would have to withdraw from Azerbaijani territory under its control.
The unrest in Nagorno-Karabakh dates back to the collapse of the Soviet Union, while the region, backed by Armenia, declared independence from Azerbaijan.
Schumacher was captured by Armenian forces in 1992 and Nagorno-Karabakh established a de facto independence that is not recognized by most of the world. The 1994 ceasefire ended the violent conflict on the enclave, but tensions continued to rise. Azerbaijan has long claimed that it will recapture the region, known internationally as Azerbaijan. Tensions flared up again in the summer and increased in September.
Since the conflict began in September, both sides have noted the deaths of dozens of civilians.
Aren Melikaya reported from Yerevan, Arzu Gabula and Gul Tussuz reported from Istanbul, Mary Ilyushina reported from Moscow, Tim Lister reported from Spain and Ivana Kottasov wrote in London.
.
