Operation Ring (; , ), known in Azerbaijan as Operation Chaykand () was the codename for the May 1991 military operation conducted by the Soviet Army, Internal Troops of the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD) of the USSR and OMON units of the Azerbaijan SSR in the Khanlar and Shahumyan districts of the Azerbaijani SSR, the Shusha, Martakert and Hadrut districts of the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast, and along the eastern border of the Armenian SSR in the districts of Goris, Noyemberyan, Ijevan and Shamshadin. Officially dubbed a "passport checking operation," the ostensible goal of the operation was to disarm "illegal armed formations" in and around Nagorno-Karabakh, referring to irregular Armenian military detachments that had been operating in the area.De Waal, Thomas. Black Garden: Armenia and Azerbaijan Through Peace and War. New York: New York University Press, 2003, p. 114. . The operation involved the use of ground troops accompanied by a complement of military vehicles, artillery and helicopter gunships to be used to root out the self-described Armenian fedayeen.
However, contrary to their stated objectives, Soviet troops and the predominantly Azerbaijani soldiers in the AzSSR OMON and army forcibly uprooted Armenians living in the 24 villages strewn across Shahumyan to leave their homes and settle elsewhere in Nagorno-Karabakh or in the neighbouring Armenian SSR.Gokhman, M. "Karabakhskaia voinа," [The Karabakh War] Russkaia Mysl. 29 November 1991. Following this, the Armenian inhabitants of 17 villages across the Shusha and Hadrut regions were forcibly removed. Border villages in the Armenian SSR were also raided. British journalist Thomas de Waal has described Operation Ring as the Soviet Union's first and only civil war and as the "beginning of the open, armed phase of the Karabakh conflict."De Waal. Black Garden, p. 120. Some authors have also described the actions of the joint Soviet and Azerbaijani force as ethnic cleansing.Melander, Erik in "State Manipulation or Nationalist Ambition" in The Role of the State in West Asia, eds. Annika Rabo and Bo Utas. New York: I.B. Tauris, 2006, p. 173. . The military operation was accompanied by systematic and gross human rights abuses.Human Rights Watch/Helsinki (1994). Azerbaijan: Seven years of conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh. New York: Human Rights Watch, p. 9.
Background
The Nagorno-Karabakh movement which had originally begun in Nagorno-Karabakh and Armenia in the late 1980s called for the Armenian-majority Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast of the Azerbaijan SSR to be united with Armenia. Official petitions were sent by Armenian leaders to the Soviet government in Moscow in order to address the issue but were rejected by General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev. The demands to transfer the region came in the middle of Gorbachev's reform policies, Glasnost and Perestroika. First implemented in 1985, when Gorbachev came into power, the liberalization of political and economical constraints in the Soviet Union gave birth to numerous nationalist groups in the different Soviet republics who insisted that they be given the right to secede and form their own independent countries.De Waal. Black Garden, p. 39.
By late 1989, the Communist Parties of the republics of Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania had largely been weakened in power. In Nagorno-Karabakh, as well as in Armenia and the rest of Azerbaijan, intercommunal relations between Armenians and Azerbaijanis had worsened due to violence and pogroms, which caused a mass flight of Armenians from Azerbaijan and Azerbaijanis from Armenia.Kaufman, Stuart. Modern Hatreds: The Symbolic Politics of Ethnic War. New York: Cornell Studies in Security Affairs, 2001, pp. 49–66. Gorbachev's policies hastened the collapse of the Soviet system and many Armenians and Azerbaijanis sought protection by arming themselves with Soviet military weaponry. His preoccupation in dealing with the numerous demands by the other republics saw the disappearance of vast amounts of assault rifles, rocket-propelled grenades, and other small arms munitions stored in caches throughout Armenia and Azerbaijan.Smith, Hedrick. The New Russians. New York: Harper Perennial, 1991, pp. 344–345. .
Foreseeing the inevitable conflict that would unfold after the Soviet Union disintegrated, Armenian volunteers from both the republic and the Armenian diaspora flocked to the enclave and formed detachments consisting of several dozen men each. Gorbachev deemed these detachments and others in Karabakh as illegal entities and banned them in a decree in July 1990.Croissant, Michael P. The Armenia-Azerbaijan Conflict: Causes and Implications. London: Praeger, 1998. p. 41. . Despite this promulgation, these groups continued to exist and actively fought against Azerbaijani special-purpose militia brigades, or OMON (Otryad Militsii Osobogo Naznacheniya, also known as the "black berets").Croissant. The Armenia-Azerbaijan Conflict, p. 41. The volatility of the attacks led the Soviet government to position military units in the Armenian capital of Yerevan and along the five-kilometre (3 mile) gap between the Armenian border and Nagorno-Karabakh.
Shahumyan (also spelled Shaumian, now the southern part of the Goranboy District of Azerbaijan), which lies directly to the north of Nagorno-Karabakh, had a population of about 20,000, of which 85 percent was ethnic Armenian.Melkonian, Markar. My Brother's Road: An American's Fateful Journey to Armenia. New York: I. B. Tauris, 2005. p. 186 The neighboring Khanlar District (since renamed Goygol) had a sizable Armenian minority. While the Armenian volunteers pledged to defend and protect civilians living in Shahumyan from Azerbaijani incursions, many of them were told to stay away by the inhabitants themselves to save the villages and the entire district from violence.Melkonian. My Brother's Road, p. 185.
Origins and planning
It is widely believed that Operation Ring was conceived by Soviet authorities in order to intimidate the Armenian populace. The Armenian SSR had boycotted the All-Union referendum, though Armenian sources alleged that Baku had planned measures against the Armenians long before the referendum. Grigoryan, Marina. "Муталибов против «мощного армянского лобби» ." Golos Armenii. 4 May 2013. Zolyan, Suren. Нагорный Карабах: проблема и конфликт. Lingva, 2001. Although the execution of Operation Ring was not proposed to Soviet officials until mid-April 1991, Mutalibov insisted in an interview that such plans had originally been formulated as early as 1989.De Waal. Black Garden, p. 115. Krivopuskov, Viktor. Мятежный Карабах. Moscow: Golos Press, 2007.
Viktor Krivopuskov, who visited Karabakh in 1990, writes:
The Russian human rights organization Memorial reports the expulsion of civilians in this region as early as 1989–90, when the inhabitants of the villages Kushi-Armavir, Azat, and Kamo were forced to abandon their homes.Доклад Правозащитного центра общества "Мемориал". Нарушения прав человека в ходе проведения операций внутренними войсками МВД СССР, Советской Армией и МВД Азербайджана в ряде районов Азербайджанской Республики в период с конца апреля по начало июня 1991 года. The Azerbaijani OMON had similarly been engaged in various "acts of harassment against Armenian villages in the enclave, including raids on collective farms and the destruction of... communal facilities."Murphy, David E. "'Operation Ring': The Black Berets in Azerbaijan," The Journal of Soviet Military Studies, Vol. 5, No. 1, March 1992. p. 82.
In 1991, Gorbachev set 17 March as the date of the All-Union referendum that the republics would take part in to decide the fate of the Soviet Union.Walker, Mark. The Strategic Use of Referendums: Power, Legitimacy, and Democracy. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003, p. 67. . Although the new union proposed in the referendum would grant greater autonomy to the individual republics, Armenia, Georgia and several other republics vowed not to take part in the referendum and instead seek independence from Moscow.Croissant. The Armenia-Azerbaijan Conflict, p. 40 Meanwhile, Azerbaijan's Communist Party head, Ayaz Mutalibov, continued to support Gorbachev's attempts to keep the Union together. Azerbaijan took part in the referendum; with 92 percent of voters agreeing to remain a part of the Soviet Union. Mutalibov's staunch loyalty to Gorbachev allowed him to garner backing from Moscow and, in effect, he now had the support to discourage the aspirations of Armenians desiring to unite with Armenia or to force them to leave the region altogether.Zürcher, Christoph and Jan Koehler. Potentials of Disorder: Explaining Conflict and Stability in the Caucasus and in the Former Yugoslavia. Oxford: Manchester University Press, 2003 p. 158. . Viktor Polyanichko, Mutalibov's deputy and the Second Secretary of the Azerbaijan Communist Party, planned the operation.Murphy. "Black Berets in Azerbaijan," p. 84.
The operation's codename, Ring, referred to the encirclement of the villages of Getashen (now Chaykand) and Martunashen (now Garabulag) by the Soviet MVD and armed forces. A date in late April was chosen for the commencement of the operation, which called for Soviet troops to surround the villages and search for illegally procured weapons and Armenian guerrilla fighters. Reacting to the growing violence, Gorbachev had also assigned units of the Soviet 4th Army's predominantly Azerbaijani 23rd Motorized Rifle Division, stationed along the Armenian-Azerbaijani border, to serve as a buffer force. The 23rd Division and other elements of the Fourth Army were selected along with the Azerbaijani OMON to take part in Ring.De Waal. Black Garden, pp. 114–118.
Implementation First operation
On 30 April, the Soviet troops and OMON converged toward Getashen and Martunashen, which were located approximately twenty-five kilometres (15 miles) north of Nagorno-Karabakh in the Khanlar District of the Azerbaijan SSR, meeting little, if any, resistance on the way. Accompanying the normal ground troops were an assortment of tanks, armoured personnel carriers, artillery and attack helicopters. While approaching the villages in Shahumyan, the military would announce their intended actions with a loudspeaker and called for the inhabitants to display proof of their citizenship (known as a "passport-regime" check) in an effort to root out the fedayeen groups led by Tatul Krpeyan, a local schoolteacher from Armenia proper. The following ultimatum was issued to residents in a village in Shahumyan:
However, this served only as a pretext as civilians were subjected to gruelling interrogations and many were taken out of their homes and beaten.Croissant. The Armenia-Azerbaijan Conflict, pp. 41–42 The troops also arrested several adult males, often without any conclusive evidence, who they accused of being members of the militia.Helsinki Watch. Bloodshed in the Caucasus: Escalation of the Armed Conflict of Nagorno-Karabakh. New York: Helsinki Watch, September 1992 p. 9 Additionally, if there was no response by the villagers to the ultimatum issued by the troops, an artillery barrage was launched above and over the village itself to further intimidate the civilians.De Waal. Black Garden, p. 117. Tatul Krpeyan was killed during the fighting in Getashen and his men took several Soviet soldiers hostage, who were exchanged for 25 villagers taken hostage by the OMON (25 more were taken to a prison in Ganja).