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The strategically important city of Shusha falls, Stepanakert is evacuated. The Armenian government has no choice but to ask for peace. The disappointment is enormous and the anger of the citizens is directed against their own government.
In late September, volunteers prepare to defend Nagorni Karabakh from Azerbaijani attacks. Now the war is over.
Valery Wanjan is angry. Just over a month ago, the twenty-year-old veterinary student returned from Romania to his native Armenia. He said that he wanted to defend his country against the Azerbaijanis and the Turks.
But now the war in Nagorni Karabakh is over before Wanjan has even touched a weapon. Instead of being at the front, the young man is now in the Erewan parliament building, along with angry citizens. Some wear camouflage suits and carry megaphones. They are calling for the resignation of the government.
Shortly after it emerged that Nikol Pashinyan, Armenia’s prime minister, had agreed to a ceasefire, riots and looting broke out throughout the capital Yerevan on Tuesday night. They drag the President of Parliament out of his car and beat him. Several government and administrative buildings are raided and occupied.
After the announcement of the armistice, angry people stormed Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan’s office in Yerevan.
The protesters do not want to accept that the fight to defend Nagorni Karabakh be abandoned.
“Our government betrayed us,” says Wanjan. «I lost so many friends in this war. We are ready to die, but we will never give up. “As he speaks, a couple of young people kick in the doors of the deputies’ offices. Only in the early hours of the morning the police manage to guarantee silence.
Armenia must withdraw its troops
More than forty days after the start of the Karabakh war, Armenia is in ruins. In view of the desperate military situation, there was no choice but to accept the terms that Russia and Turkey had proposed, Prime Minister Pashinyan announced that night adding that it was certainly not a victory, but not a defeat either.
For many here, however, the government’s approach amounts to capitulating: Armenia must withdraw its troops from the disputed area. The future of Nagorni Karabakh, the area populated mainly by Armenians but belonging to Azerbaijan under international law, which Yerevan ruled for almost thirty years, is unclear.
Little chance against modern Azerbaijan army
But the debacle is looming. Because since the beginning of the war on September 27, the Armenian troops have been in retreat almost permanently. With their old Russian weapons, they are inferior to the highly armed and Turkish-backed Azerbaijani army.
Above all, drones are a problem, Gor Iskandarjan, a commander of the Armenian front in northern Nagorni Karabakh, said in an interview weeks ago. Modern combat drones of Turkish and Israeli production hit the Armenians early on and were primarily responsible for the high losses, he said at the time in his smoke-filled command bunker.
In Stepanakert, the capital of Nagorni Karabach, young licensed front-line soldiers keep saying that out of sheer desperation they fired at the unmanned missiles with single rifles.
It does not help the Armenians who have built a veritable network of trenches and bunkers over the past decades to secure Nagorni Karabakh and seven occupied Azerbaijani provinces as a buffer zone. The positions, whose wooden walkways and shelters are reminiscent of World War I images, held out longer than expected, but could not stop the advance of the Azerbaijanis.
Shusha’s fall is the turning point
At the end of last week, Azerbaijani troops arrived in the city of Shusha in the heart of Karabakh. Shusha, which Armenians call Shushi, is equally important to Armenians and Azerbaijanis; it is considered the cultural capital of the region. It is also of great strategic importance. Because whoever controls the city atop a rocky plateau, controls all of Nagorni Karabach, including the capital Stepanakert below and the vital connecting road to Armenia.
In Armenia’s capital Yerevan, security forces guard the parliament building. Many citizens demonstrate against the “betrayal” of Nagorni Karabakh by his government.
Explosions above Stepanakert light up the mountain near Shusha.
Shusha will never surrender, says a few days before the fall of the city, David Babajan, advisor to the president of the “Republic of Arzach”, as the Armenians call their de facto state, which has existed since the 1990s. Babajan se sit in the Hotel Armenia in Stepanakert, surrounded by wild-looking, armed, bearded men. They are determined to defend their country to the end.
As the advisor speaks, the trucks head forward. From the mountain that Shusha stands on, the terrible noise of battle penetrates through the fog. One can only guess what cruel fight is taking place there.
Time and again, rickety delivery vans take the injured to Stepanakert hospital: old and young, bruised-faced, hauled up on stretchers or supported by colleagues. You can hear moaning and crying everywhere. Family members collapse when they learn that a relative has fallen. The lost-looking soldiers quickly smoke a few cigarettes before heading back into battle.
Defeat was looming in Stepanakert
Despite weeks of setbacks, the Armenians still seem to believe in victory right now. “It looked really bad in 1992,” says Babajan, referring to the war in the 1990s, when Armenia and Azerbaijan were already fighting for Nagorni Karabakh. “Then we were able to change course. I think this time we will also succeed. “
Despite the presidential adviser’s slogans, things are not looking good for the Armenian side in Stepanakert at the moment. The city is becoming emptier. There are almost no cars on the streets and, apart from armed men, almost all stray dogs run through the squares.
The death toll from the six-week fighting is high: In Stepanakert, men walk past a row of newly dug graves.
The few remaining civilians have retreated to wet bunkers. There they sit on cardboard boxes or makeshift beds, surrounded by sacks of bread and canned food, and hope that somehow another miracle will happen after all. “I can’t leave here, this is my country,” says a seventy-year-old woman in the basement of an elementary school. “The men in my family are all in the front line. I won’t let her down. “
Even the fair takes place underground. In a choked voice, the Archbishop of Nagorni Karabach said a prayer on Friday to the few believers gathered in the basement of Stepanakert Cathedral as bombs and grenades fell on the city.
The final battle for Stepanakert no longer takes place
Meanwhile, Armenian soldiers are fighting a desperate defensive battle in Shusha. At this time, only a small amount of information was leaked to the outside world, but the rumor was still circulating in Stepanakert that Schuscha was about to fall.
On Friday afternoon, hundreds of Armenian soldiers suddenly descend from the mountain on foot. Empty ammunition boxes, bloody bandages and overturned vehicles lie on the edge of the street. Shortly before Schuscha, a pair of T-72 tanks secure the road. It is true that the Armenian associations still officially control the city. But the fight is probably already lost at this point.
A few hours later, the Armenian military leadership decided to evacuate Stepanakert. Suddenly, thousands of civilian vehicles fill the previously empty streets and set off in a huge tin column on their way to safe Armenia. The former capital of the self-proclaimed ‘Republic of Artsakh’ is turning into an empty military camp, preparing for the final battle.
But it is no longer about that. Instead, Armenia asks for peace.
In Ganja, the second largest city in Azerbaijan, people with a portrait of President Ilham Aliyev celebrate the victory in the Karabakh conflict.
The president of Armenia is under pressure
There are still signs in Yerevan that say “We will win.” But the people of the capital realize the scale of the debacle with horror. The country had been in something of a frenzy for the past few weeks and had supported the troops at the front by every means possible. There was no other option than victory.
Now Pashinyan has to declare a catastrophic defeat for his country with thousands of fallen soldiers and the loss of at least parts of Nagorni Karabakh.
Pashinyan took office in 2018 as a result of a democratic revolution; it is not clear whether he will survive the current crisis politically. Valery Wanjan, the angry student in the busy parliament building, would definitely like to send the prime minister to hell. “It should disappear,” he says, adding: “The army must take power. Then we keep fighting, until we win. “
Daniel Böhm is a freelance journalist and stayed in Nagorni Karabach for several weeks during the war. A few days ago he had to leave Stepanakert for security reasons.
