Azerbaijani troops and Turkish-backed Syrian militants continue storming the town of Shusha, located just south of the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic capital, Stepanakert. During the past 24 hours, infantry of the Turkish-Azerbaijani bloc under cover of intense artillery and drone strikes captured several heights southeast of Shusha and were able to keep fire control over the road linking the town with the Lachin corridor area. At the same time, Armenian forces repelled several Azerbaijani attacks on the town itself inflicting, at least according to Yerevan, heavy casualties to pro-Baku forces. This goes contrary to claims of Azerbaijani sources that in their reports have almost captured the town already.
In fact, Shusha is not even encircled and the Armenians still have an option to send supplies and reinforcements to it from the north and northwest. Most likely, the Azerbaijani-Turkish bloc wants to repeat the Hadrut scenario by taking control of the main heights surrounding Shusha and block the main nearby roads with drone and artillery fire. In the case of Hadrut, this forced the Armenians to withdraw their forces from the town. Nonetheless, Shusha is a different story. This is the iconic town for the Armenian patriotic narrative and the gates to Stepanakert. So, Yerevan will likely try to defend it as long as it is possible.
It could be said that the fate of the entire conflict is being decided in the battle of Susha. If Armenian forces are able to contain the Azerbaijani advance, they will get a chance to keep the Turkish-Azerbaijani bloc in the areas that it has captured in the south. If Shusha falls into Turkish hands, the fate of the central part of Nagorno-Karabakh will be predetermined.
The situation near Martuni, Martakert, and Lachin is much better for Armenians. The trend of clashes there tends to be turned to positional fighting amid the inability of Baku and Azerbaijan to deliver a devastating blow to their opponent in this area. Nonetheless, the control of these areas will not help the Armenians if Shusha is captured. At the same time, they are not able to redeploy forces from Lachin to the east because this will immediately trigger a new attempt by Azerbaijan to capture the area.
Meanwhile, Turkish and Azerbaijani sources complain that Armenia continues receiving help – military equipment and likely intelligence sharing assistance – in the conflict. The Armenians use this discontent to speculate that soon the airspace over Nagorno-Karabakh will be closed by Russia and the Azerbaijanis will have to run away to Baku. Despite this, the chances of direct Russian intervention in the current regional situation remains unlikely. However, if Turkey and Azerbaijan continue to extensively exploit Syrian militants in the conflict as cannon fodder, the strategy that Ankara already tried in Syria and Libya, the scale of indirect Russian support to the Armenians will definitely grow. If one takes into account the reaction in the public sphere, even current limited Russian support already created difficulties for the Azerbaijani-Turkish advance.
A further increase of involvement of Russia in the conflict will make a direct military victory over the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic a hardly possible scenario for the Azerbaijani-Turkish alliance. This explains its diplomatic positions in the region while Baku and Ankara develop their Karabakh offensive claiming that it is just a forced reaction to the regular ceasefire violations by Armenia. Nonetheless, if red lines are passed, diplomatic rhetoric alone will not help.
Quite incredible that tiny Armenia has been able to withstand so far the 2nd largest army of NATO and oil-rich Azerbaijan. 2-3 million people versus 95 million people. Of course, it’s either fight, or be genocided – like the Turks did to Armenians 105 years ago.
Ethnic Armenians in karabagh should negotiate a settlement with Azerbaijan and end the conflict. Territorial integrity of Azerbaijan is as important as the safety of all ethnicities. Ethnic Armenians in Karabakh, should stop looking toward Yerevan and start looking toward Baku and negotiate their rightful place in Azerbaijan.
Yerevan should stop interference and allow a peaceful settlement.
The Turkish backed islamist terrorists being sent to this war theater as a mercenary force for Baku are a threat not only to Armenian citizens, but to Russia as well. They were fighting and seeking to kill Russians in Syria not too long ago. They should be swiftly wiped out by missile strikes while they are being used in regular warfare so close to Russia. The Turks would cry and scream, but they would have only themselves to blame for resorting to terrorists in their territorial dispute with the Armenians.
Quite frankly, if the Turks and Azeris, with their already clear manpower and economic advantage over the Armenian defenders, cannot defeat their foes withouth the use of a foreign terrorist mercenary force that commited unspeakble crimes against the Syrian population, that would prove their armies to be inept and should therefore stop this nonsensical conflict at once.
Regardless of what many here and the article would wish to happen, all indicators point to an Azeri overun of point of conflict, in this case Shusha.
When this happens, the main lifeline to the heart of N Karabagh will be severed and any hope of reversal of fortune for the Armenians(NK) will be snuffed out.
This should take no more than 4 days, im guessing more like 48 hrs.
The wanabe generals should go back and review this conflict from the very beginning and if they did, they would see a clear and concrete pattern, that the NK forces have never been able to stop any advance in any arena of conflict.
Oh sure there were minor victories of small skirmishes but on the whole the Azeri advance has not been stopped.
When you dont have eyes and guns in the air, you are effectively fighting blind as is the case for the Armenians (NK).
At every juncture the NK forces have had to react and defend as they cannot see where the enemy is. It has been noted that he NK style of warfare relies quite heavily the old Soviet system of trench warfare.
While this may have worked in the past, drone tech has changed this paradigm and there is no trench deep enough that cant be spotted from the air nor hide from a smart bomb who has pinpoint accuracy.
Latest reports suggest that NK forces are digging in and around Shusha, especially the main roadway. If this were the case, this could seriously slow any Azeri advance but it also would mean that NK would be in NO position to repel and chase out their foe.
At best it will be a slow and costly grind but inevitably a lost cause because then logistics will be the real decisive factor for both sides.
I hope the NK presence at the outskirts of Shusha gives the residents of Shusha an avenue to leave what looks like to be an inevitable siege scenario.
If NK is still thinking/hoping for a knight in shining armour who will swoop in and rescue their chestnutts from the fire, they are sorely mistaken. If such a knight was suiting up in the wings, they would have said something by now or texted that they are on their way. ……..Crickets…….!
Putin told them fairly early, if the war comes inside your border, lemme know, until then.. sorry i gotta take this other call, gota go bye…
As for the constant and incessant name calling of “head choppers” “turko terrorist” “Ottaman blah blah”…. Please stop.
In war atrocities are committed from ALL sides and propaganda is a weapon more potent than a cruise misslie.
The innane yells of “trroristss” and the like makes you no better than the “gas chambers, never forget” group.
I don’t know if you are actually trying to spread a skewed perspective or what.
The Pashinyan government in Armenia is as complicit in what is happening in NK as the Turks and the Azeris; they are handing the territory over to the Azeris and allowing the population to be massacred.
They are doing this so both Azerbaijan and Armenia can join NATO, which is part of a greater plan to build a NATO wall around Iran.
You can try to push the narrative that this is some kind of genuine conflict as much as you want, I don’t think it’s going to fly here.
At the end of the day, the only thing that matters here is the civilian population of Artsakh-Gharabagh. It is absolutely cruel of the traitor Pashinyan to sell them out like he is, and allow them to be ethnically cleansed by headchoppers, whose presence on the ground is a fact whether you want to admit it or not.
Jamshyd,
I couldn’t agree more with your statement.
Regarding the civilian population I imagine they have mostly been evacuated…?
May God help those who are left there to bear the full onslaught of the Turko-Ottoman headchoppers from Idlib, who have been denied victory in Syria and are now thirsty for blood and plunder in NK.
This is exactly right. Pashinyan proved himself to be a traitor to the Armenian people when he began bending the knee to Israel right from the start and pushing to open an embassy in Jerusalem. And now by selling out Artsakh in order to fully join global Zionism, he is now a war criminal.
I still have faith that God willing, Artsakh will survive against these overwhelming odds. There have been reports of Sepah movements in and out of Artsakh for months now, in addition to standard deployments along the border, so I am optimistic.
And as Jamshyd wrote in an earlier comment, the Azerbaijanis likely do not have the will to massacre women and children, hence the need for Turkey to send in the Wahhabi cannibals. Sepah absolutely will not tolerate the presence of Wahhabis in Artsakh or a Wahhabi resurgence in the Caucasus in general. In these actions, the Zionists are only hastening their own inevitable demise.
Jamshyd, if Iran don’t react now as in backing the Artsakh forces with asymmetric capabilities and volunteers, we are looking at a potential border problem in the future. You know this, and so does the Sepah leadership. I’m surprised Iran is holding back and playing neutral.
The Iranian cause has been hopeless from the beginning. How can one country alone stand against all the countries of the world working together?
I think the most important lesson here is the undeniable reality that Putin and Russia are in cahoots with the Zionist enemy.
I am not too worried about the Sepah. They have been overcoming hopeless odds again and again. They are magicians. It’s what they do.