In an interview with Forrights.am, Arman Petrosyan, an employee of the Special Purpose Department of the Artsakh NSS, presented details of the Azerbaijani attack on September 19. He is a participant in military operations, as well as 44-Day and Four-Day wars.
“On September 19, they called and said that the situation has become tense and we need to be at the place of service urgently. We took weapons and ammunition and went. After fighting for six or seven hours, we learned that the enemy has entered the Kashen mine, most of Martakert has been taken, and they were approaching Stepanakert. We were instructed to go to Krkzhan and prevent the enemy from approaching Stepanakert. We stopped the advance of the enemy in that direction. Two of us were wounded, they had one person killed. The skirmish stopped when they said that the war was being stopped. We learned about the capitulation,” he said.
Arman Petrosyan left Artsakh on September 29. After the combat operations, he has participated in humanitarian work.
“The morgue was full of corpses; they had to be transported to Armenia. There were several civilian and one Red Cross truck. Red Cross employees did not want to get their trunk dirty by putting bodies in it. An unpleasant incident happened. Red Cross employees came, took a corpse, took photos with it, then put the corpse on the ground and left. We transported all the corpses in trucks with seven people: four employees of the Artsakh rescue service and three civilians, one of whom was me. We placed 182 bodies in trucks. In the end, when there was no cars left, they let us use the Red Cross car,” said Arman Petrosyan.
Arman and several citizens who remained in Stepanakert left when the Azerbaijani police entered the city. “There was communication with them, they said hello, asked if were staying and that’s it.”
On September 19, Armenia did not participate in the military operations. We asked Arman Petrosyan whether they were expecting military support. “It was the only case that Armenia took the right step by not getting involved in military operations, but that does not justify the handing over of Artsakh.”
After that attack, Azerbaijan captured and has been holding Artsakh’s military-political leadership in Baku for a year. To this day, it remains unknown how their capture took place. Arman Petrosyan provided certain details to Forrights.am. “I don’t have a lot of information, but in those hours, Azerbaijanies were changing their decisions minute by minute. They clearly said: either the leaders must surrender, or they will capture the people who remained in Artsakh at that moment. It was about 300 people: employees of the police, MES and citizens. The presidents made sacrifices to spare those people. The former presidents [of NK] were taken from the house of one of the leaders of the power structures of Artsakh. They called him there and took him. According to my information, former presidents and other officials were aware of why they were being called there.”
Arman Petrosyan notes that the Russian peacekeeping mission did nothing in those days to save the civilian population of Artsakh. “They were busy saving their own skin, especially since four or five of their people died accidentally.”
Narek Kirakosyan
Narek Kirakosyan
Narek Kirakosyan is a journalist, works on the principle of "a person is an absolute value".