Report presents an article from the Argumenty i Fakty (AiF) newspaper:
Here and there in Yerevan, you can come across vehicles with a big black-and-white image of a man in a military uniform on a back window. This is a father, a brother, or a son who recently died in the 44-day war with Azerbaijan for Nagorno Karabakh.
According to official figures, 4,000 Armenian soldiers were killed - unofficially about 7,000. For a country with a population of less than three million, this is a terrible loss. "That was complete chaos," says militiaman Armen Mnatsakanyan, showing me his hand without two fingers. "I didn't even have time to fight. I arrived at the front; two days later, we were sitting at the post, drinking cognac, suddenly a slight buzz and - bam! I woke up already in the hospital, hit by a blow from a Turkish drone. Two of my friends were blown to shreds, I miraculously survived, but my arm suffered." The Karabakh war, which lasted from September 27 to November 10, 2020, showed excellently: courage alone is not enough to win an armed conflict. We need a sober assessment of the enemy's capabilities, the strictest discipline, and modern technical equipment. The system of bringing hundreds of tanks and brave soldiers into an open field shouting "Hurray!" no longer works.
The AiF observer decided to figure out what lessons Russia should learn from this.
"If they stick around, we will get to Baku!"
"Azerbaijan has consistently armed itself since 1994," says the former captain of the Armenian army Suren Ter-Ghukasyan, sighing. "In the last nine years alone, Azerbaijan spent $24 billion on defense. Its military expenditures amounted to 11% of the country's budget. Azerbaijanis bought the latest helicopters and armored personnel carriers, anti-tank complexes "Kornet-E", air defense systems "S-300" from Russia. From Turkey and Israel, they purchased drones capable of delivering strikes from great heights. Their army was trained by the best Turkish, Israeli, and American military instructors. Armenia has no oil and such a crazy amount of money: only $4 billion was allocated for the army. Of course, we also acquired weapons, but not much: Iskander missiles, Serbian-made mortars. We did a stupid thing. We were in euphoria from the rapid defeat and desertion of the Azerbaijani militia in the previous war. Mocking voices were heard: Do these Azerbaijanis know how to fight at all? If they just stick around, we will reach Baku! In short, we ended in a bad way!"
"Tanks were useless"
The confrontation on the front line in Karabakh lasted for 26 long years. Skirmishes and 'duels' of snipers were observed every day. That is, you can't relax. But it turned out that the Armenians were not prepared for the large-scale offensive of the Azerbaijanis. They rested on their laurels after past successes, believing that the enemy was easy to deal with.
Meanwhile, in Azerbaijan, the return of Karabakh has become a national idea. I was convinced of this myself when I was in Baku. Since childhood, Azerbaijanis have dreamed of new battles and were mentally prepared for sacrifices. For years, the Armenians perceived the purchase of expensive modern weapons by Azerbaijan as nothing more than an attempt to scare them. The enemy was humiliated in advance and openly laughed at: "They are cowards, they will not dare."
I am talking in a cafe in the center of Yerevan with Levon Melkonyan, a volunteer who came to fight for Karabakh in early October last year. The conversation is in English and Arabic: Levon does not know Russian since he was born in Lebanon in the Armenian quarter of Beirut. "From the first day of the war, Azerbaijanis dominated the air," he recalls. "Tanks and armored cars turned out to be useless: they were burned in dozens by drone strikes. Rockets hit shelters and buildings where commanders gathered for meetings. I spent a month at a collection point at the border, and they never sent us anywhere: any car on the road was in danger of an airstrike."
"I drank from morning till late."
I heard this point of view from many military men in Yerevan: Armenia gathered tens of thousands of soldiers and did not know what to do with them further since the moment of transfer to the front was missed. The next point is a discipline in the combat zone. The volunteer with whom I spoke at the very beginning of the article does not hide: sitting on the front line, he is drinking cognac. It is clear that oftentimes, you can't do without alcohol at war (I myself have been on "front" business trips dozens of times), remember the Great Patriotic War and the "People's Commissar's hundred grams." However, if you drink regularly "for courage", courage gets higher than the roof, but cold reasoning and quick reaction are just zero. "In our positions, even the officers drank decently," admits the soldier of the separatist formations Arayik Khachikyan. "But it's just scary. I drank from morning till late. Otherwise, you can't bear the sounds of drone explosions. There are rumors that, in a state of drunkenness, a high-ranking Armenian politician called the generals and demanded that they immediately attack a particular village." The commanders, as Khachikyan said, often did not care about the orders of the leadership and did as they saw fit.
"Funerals every day"
Flowers are sold on every corner in Yerevan, and the reason is not the recently celebrated March 8 holiday. "Red roses and carnations have risen in price dramatically," saleswoman Gayane says quietly to me. "Of course, in October-November, dozens were buried every day... Then the funeral service, they have to put flowers on the grave... And they still bury them, find bodies... One and a half thousand are missing... One thing I do not understand is why the Iskanders were not used? "These tactical missile systems were supplied to Armenia long ago, but they were not used during the war: only old Soviet missiles were launched at the Azerbaijani city of Ganja. They tried to hit the military base and eventually hit the residential quarters, which exposed the Armenians as murderers of civilians. Prime Minister Pashinyan voiced an outright bullshit, saying that the Iskanders are out of order and exploded 'by only 10%.' Pashinyan sacked the head of the General Staff for mocking him, the Armenian army generals demanded the prime minister's resignation, and it all led to severe crisis:
"The determination was needed to hit the Azerbaijani oil fields with Iskanders," explains the ex-captain of the Armenian army Suren Ter-Ghukasyan. "But no one dared to give such an order. Everyone was shifting the blame on others, and it is unclear what they hoped for."
Another war in the post-Soviet space is a good lesson for Russia. Yes, now are not the nineties, and everything is all right with the discipline within the Russian army, and the soldiers do not lack courage. But, alas, as I said above, courage in modern conditions cannot be won much. The successful use of the latest Turkish electronically controlled drones has shown that warfare methods are changing too rapidly these days. I hope that Russia will soon start producing UAVs with the quality of drones made in Turkey. Since we do not have good relations with all our neighbors, we should be prepared for surprises. But we shouldn't engage in chest-thumping. It did not help Armenia.