The end of the second Karabakh war gave rise to many riddles and conspiracy theories. Indeed, some of the circumstances of this conflict are extremely mysterious, or at least paradoxical from the point of view of conventional military logic. Apparently, the Armenian leadership itself provoked a political catastrophe.
Let's list which riddles raise the biggest questions and provoke the appearance of "conspiracy theories"in Armenia (and not only).
1. Why was there no full-fledged mobilization in Armenia and no full-fledged military units deployed to the conflict area?
Despite loud Patriotic statements, there was no real mobilization in Armenia. The permanent number of the Armenian army – about 50 thousand people-was increased only by volunteers. While the conditions of the fighting required to increase the number of defenders of Karabakh to 80-100 thousand people at least. At the same time, very soon the lack of specialists (for example, artillery calculations and MLRS) began to affect the front in the Armenian army. There was no one to fill in the losses.
It is inexplicable why Yerevan did not conduct a real mobilization. The Armenian leadership simply avoids talking about this topic. If there was a mobilization plan, no one tried to implement it. As a result, there was no rotation of military personnel on the first line, in some areas people were sitting in the trenches for a month without a shift. 18-20-year-olds were on the front line, and at some point the untrained youth made up up to 80% of the personnel. The Karabakh detachments, made up of professionals and veterans, suffered heavy losses in the first week, which there was no one and nothing to make up for, since there were simply no reinforcements.
Groups of volunteers in Armenia were formed along party lines. The scandal was caused by an attempt to form a separate detachment of the prosperous Armenia party named after the oligarch Gagik Tsarukyan, who is now Pashinyan's main opponent. The two have been in conflict for more than a decade. Now the Prime Minister openly calls Tsarukyan "the culprit of the fall of Shusha", since his phantom squad allegedly did not have enough at the front to win. These conflicts could have been avoided simply by having a mobilization plan and a desire to implement it.
The main military forces of Armenia did not move to Karabakh. But in order to relieve the tension created by Azerbaijani UAVs, it was enough to simply relocate early detection locators to Goris. And one army corps would have been enough to cover the southern direction even at the stage when the Azerbaijanis were languidly marking time in front of the first line of defense. Proper supplies were not organized, and after a month of fighting, this led to a shortage of missiles for the MLRS and shells for the barrel artillery. And without artillery support, the infantry can only die heroically.
All this borders on sabotage, although it may be partly explained by local sloppiness and unwillingness to weaken the defense of Armenia proper. The latter is a very controversial position and it looks like the Armenian leadership has simply abandoned Karabakh to its fate.
2. Why did the Northern front behave so strangely?
In the North and North-East of Karabakh, in the area of the Kyrgyz Republic, there was a large fortified area of the Armenian defense, which included very combat-ready units. And they really put up a serious resistance to the advancing Azerbaijani group and in the end actually stopped it (losing, however, several positions and significant villages).
But after that, the elite Yehnikner battalion suddenly retreated, although its commander managed to get the "Hero of Artsakh". Moreover, since October 3, neither "Ehnikner" nor any military unit at all was removed from the Northern front and was not transferred to help the burning South. At the same time, the Azerbaijanis only once decided to simulate an offensive in the North again, clearly for distracting purposes. There was no need to keep up to 20 thousand people in the North.
The Karabakh leadership informally explains all this as a lack of resources. But now the" lack of resources " in Karabakh explains everything.
3. Why did the southern front collapse?
The fact that the main blow is being inflicted by the Azerbaijanis in the South, in the steppe zone, was visible to the naked eye already in the first few days of the war. Nevertheless, resources – human and technical-began to arrive on the southern front when this front was no longer in fact there. The steppe zone was lost, and the front stopped along the edge of the mountains from Krasny Bazar to Martuni. As a result, up to 30 thousand people defending Karabakh have accumulated in this area. They were threatened with complete encirclement and death, which was one of the reasons for signing the ceasefire agreement. At the same time, before the occupation of Jabrayil, the Azerbaijani troops advanced very slowly, disrupting their own pace of attack. This gave the Armenians a small, but still a head start in order to understand the situation and engage in relocation.
After the occupation of Jabrayil, the front began to fall apart, and the advance of the Azerbaijanis sharply accelerated. The moment was lost.
For some reason, the Armenian command has not made a decision about the transfer of additional resources to the southern front? This is another mystery.
4. Why did the Armenian side limit itself to passive defense?
During the entire war, the Armenian side only twice attempted a counterattack against the advanced units of the Azerbaijanis who were running far ahead. Both times this happened opposite Lachin in a narrow gorge, with the extreme vulnerability of the Azerbaijani battalion-tactical group (BTG). Once even successfully. But these operations were simply reduced to a massive strike of the MLRS on enemy clusters. Operations to block the gorge and encircle the enemy in other sections of the southern front were suggested. But not a single Armenian unit moved. An amazing war in which one of the parties did not conduct a single offensive operation on the ground, limited only and exclusively to passive defense.
A successful counteroffensive in the gorge before Lachin would have crushed so many Azerbaijani forces in the cauldron that they would not have thought about attacking Shusha for at least a couple of weeks. And later it was quite possible to destroy the Azerbaijani infantry in the ravine Averatec. But it took a lot of effort.
There is no explanation for why the Armenian side did not even try to counterattack or use other methods to use the operational advantage that it repeatedly had. Lack of resources can only be referred to endlessly in the last stages of warfare, but passive defense has been a constant tactic since the beginning of the war.
5. Why was Shusha handed over?
The most sensitive and incomprehensible question. The first assault on the city by Azerbaijani infantry was extremely unsuccessful. Then the second column of Azerbaijanis was covered by the MLRS strike. With some effort and assistance from Armenia, the Azerbaijani group that broke through to the city could be destroyed. However, suddenly a decision is made to leave the city without a fight and not to attempt to liberate it with the favorable operational and tactical situation remaining for another day.
It is believed that the decision to leave Shusha was made by NKR President Araik Harutyunyan and Secretary of the NKR security Council General Samvel Babayan, a local legend. Now, in protest against the signing of the armistice, he left his post and renounced the title of Hero of Artsakh. The Armenian YouTube channel "Lurer" ("news") published a recording of Babayan and Harutyunyan's talks, from which it follows that General Babayan really considered the possibility of recapturing Shusha even after its abandonment,but the further prospect of resistance was very gloomy.
A fragment of the conversation (the translation is not literal): "Let's calculate the (combat) task. Twenty, thirty volleys of "Smerch" cover Shushi. We kill everyone there. Taking the city back. What's next? The state of the army and the civilian population does not allow for war. We gave battle, took Shushi, then what? ( ... ) we Can't fight with the NATO army, with mercenaries, fully equipped... I tried to organize an operation with three battalions yesterday. We have four howitzers in total. If we are not provided with artillery, how will you ensure the offensive or cut it off (the enemy-approx. VIEW) tails? (...) Today we must finally negotiate with Russia that we are handing over these territories and leaving them. Or they help us.
Imagine that we have two Grads for the entire army today, a dozen howitzers, for which we have no shells."
To sum up, General Babayan believed that resistance was useless at this stage of the fighting. We must refuse to continue the war and either surrender, or ask for ten days for an organized exit of the local population and the 30 thousand soldiers of the southern front who are completely surrounded. As an alternative, it was proposed to urgently ask Russia for direct military assistance in the form of PMCs or volunteers, equipment and ammunition.
But all this does not negate the question of why a small group of Azerbaijani infantrymen without heavy equipment, who broke through to Shusha, was not destroyed before the Armenian army began to panic. The retention of Shusha created a completely different architecture of political agreements for the NKR and Armenia. If this is a political decision, then who actually made it?
* * *
This list of mysteries of the second Karabakh war is far from complete. In addition, the Armenian leadership has accumulated a lot of the same questions about preparing for war. This war was lost even before it began, precisely because of the inaction or strange action of Yerevan.
The proceedings will continue for a long time. The situation in the region has changed so radically in these forty days that all the old approaches to resolving the conflict and its military component have died of their own accord. And the new reality will require new solutions for Armenia. And it is unclear who will make these decisions.
Evgeny Krutikov
