Nagorno-Karabagh: Military Balance Between Armenia & Azerbaijan

[Federate]

Re: Nagorno-Karabagh: Military Balance Between Armenia & Azerbaijan

MOD truck catches fire in Armenia

July 07, 2011 | 15:12

YEREVAN.- A truck burned on Ashtarak-Yeghvard highway in Aragatsotn region of Armenia on Wednesday, Armenian Ministry of Emergency Situations informed Armenian News-NEWS.am.

KAMAZ truck, which belonged to Armenian MOD, overturned under unclear circumstances.

Driver Andranik Andreasyan, 48, and serviceman Samvel Sarukhanyan, 27, were taken to Armenia medical center with bodily injuries. Doctors say they are critical.

http://news.am/eng/news/67075.html

[burjuin]

Re: Nagorno-Karabagh: Military Balance Between Armenia & Azerbaijan

[Vrej1915]

Re: Nagorno-Karabagh: Military Balance Between Armenia & Azerbaijan

In Karabakh, the first post-Soviet war

(Will Englund/ The Washington Post ) -
Children play on a tank that now is a memorial to the 1992 assault on the town of Shushi, considered a signal Armenian victory in the war against Azerbaijan.



By Will Englund, Published: July 7
STEPANAKERT, Nagorno-Karabakh — Nothing blindsided Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in the late 1980s more than the outbreak of intense national feeling among minority populations in the Soviet Union, much of it laced with religious antagonism.

In Dagestan, Muslims angry about restrictions on the hajj, or pilgrimage to Mecca, stormed a government building. In Ukraine, Eastern Catholics demanded independence. But nowhere was the tension more acute than in Nagorno-Karabakh, a mountainous redoubt in the South Caucasus, famous for mulberries, honey, ancient monasteries, precipitous gorges and centuries of warfare.

It is populated overwhelmingly by Armenians but was assigned, by Joseph Stalin, to the Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic in 1921. Stalin was, at the time, the commissar for nationalities, and in a divide-and-rule strategy, he frequently drew borders to divide ethnic groups. Those borders, in the Caucasus and Central Asia, still bedevil current efforts to maintain peaceful relations.

Armenians, for instance, have been Christians for nearly 1,700 years, and Azerbaijanis are Muslims, closely related to the Turks. Harsh Soviet rule suppressed their mutual hostility and distrust, but when Gorbachev’s reforms relaxed the constraints, the old hatreds reemerged.

In 1988, Karabakh’s leaders said they wanted to be joined to Armenia proper, just to the west. Moscow never really answered, but in Azerbaijan, pogroms were launched against ethnic Armenians in response, with dozens killed. The Soviet army sent in troops, Azerbaijanis fled Karabakh, and Azerbaijan deported more than 5,000 Armenians. By 1991, nearly 1,000 people had been killed in sporadic fighting.

A state of emergency helped to keep the lid on. But in July, Gorbachev decided to pull Soviet troops out. Gun battles erupted almost immediately. On July 7, 1991, reports reached Moscow that Armenian villages along Karabakh’s border were under attack and at least three people were dead.

The president of the Armenian republic, Levon Ter-Petrossian, accused Gorbachev of trying to blackmail Armenia into joining a new Soviet treaty of union, thus forgoing independence, by showing that it was helpless without the protection of the central government.

This new treaty was scheduled for signing on Aug. 20, but by early July, only nine of the Soviet Union’s 15 republics had shown any interest in it, and Gorbachev’s hard-line critics said he was risking the dissolution of the country. He desperately wanted more republics to sign on.

Armenia wasn’t to be one of them, nor was Azerbaijan. Both went on to declare independence, as had Nagorno-Karabakh itself, and by 1992, they were engaged in a full-scale war — the first war connected to the Soviet collapse. When it ended in a cease-fire in 1994, Nagorno-Karabakh had broken free.

But no nation has ever recognized it. It is a de facto republic, with close ties to neighboring Armenia but a firm sense of independence. Karabakh today is a prickly place, immensely proud of its victory over Azerbaijan, confident in the face of continuing Azerbaijani threats of renewed war, and irritated that it hasn’t been given a place at the negotiating table, where its interests are represented by the nation of Armenia — and where little progress has been made over the years.

The latest attempt to hammer out a framework peace deal, under the sponsorship of Russia, France and the United States, came to nothing at a meeting in the Russian city of Kazan on June 24.

Sidelined, Karabakhis would appreciate international recognition, but they’re not about to beg for it. “Unrecognized? So what. We’re used to it by now,” says Tevan Poghosyan, formerly Karabakh’s representative in the United States. People here are convinced that if the international community had refused to recognize what they view as Azerbaijan’s artificial Soviet-era borders back when the U.S.S.R. broke up, Azerbaijan wouldn’t have been emboldened to attack and their history would have been very different.

Instead, thousands died under bombardment, Stepanakert was half-destroyed, and the legends of the “martyrs” of Artsakh, the traditional name for Karabakh, took hold. There’s still plenty of shooting across the line of contact: 43 incidents in one recent 24-hour period. Seven people on the Karabakh side were reported killed in 2010, and, says Defense Minister Movses Hakobyan, “We always shoot back.”

Karabakhis aren’t inclined to make concessions for peace, of territory or anything else. “We liberated those lands. They are historic Armenian lands. We shed the blood of our sons for those lands,” said Robert Baghryan, who today heads the Union of Freedom Fighters of the Artsakh War.

Now a lieutenant colonel in the Karabakh reserves, Baghryan got his military training in the Soviet army, where he served as a sergeant. The biggest difference in outlook between the two armies? Combat readiness, he says. The Soviets never paid much attention to it.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/in-karabakh-the-first-post-soviet-war/2011/07/06/gIQAF7tm1H_story.html

[burjuin]

Re: Nagorno-Karabagh: Military Balance Between Armenia & Azerbaijan

Starting from 21.59 show the leaders of the military industry of Poland, who say they are ready to come to Armenia in July for talks on military cooperation

ARM Defense Minister Received the President of the Polish Chamber of Military Industry
2011-07-08
On June 8, ARM Defense Minister Seyran Ohanyan received the headed delegation of the president of the Polish Chamber of Military Industry Slavomir Kulakovsky. They discussed the prospective of the cooperation in the field of military industry.
The parties noted with satisfaction that the cooperation between the Armenian and Polish companies develops successfully.

http://www.mil.am/1310140487

[burjuin]

Re: Nagorno-Karabagh: Military Balance Between Armenia & Azerbaijan

Azerbaijani soldiers died as a result of electric shock

[July 8. 2011 15:06]

Baku. Hafiz Heydarov - APA. Azerbaijani soldiers died in an accident. APA reported in Khachmaz recruiting office. According to information designed for active military service Khachmaz district military commissariat soldier Alirza oglu Dashdemir Azaev died as a result of electric shock to «N»-military unit of the Ministry of Defence. The soldier was buried today in his home district.

apa.az

[haysip]

Re: Nagorno-Karabagh: Military Balance Between Armenia & Azerbaijan

Artsakh War never before heard secrets told by one of the Generals. he talks about the russians that fought for the azeris and the many traitors inside our jokats...

watch all 3 parts

http://www.louysworld.com/2011/07/04/%D5%A1%D6%80%D6%81%D5%A1%D5%AD%D5%B5%D5%A1%D5%B6-%D5%A1%D5%A6%D5%A1%D5%BF%D5%A1%D5%B4%D5%A1%D6%80%D5%BF%D5%AB-%D6%84%D5%A1%D5%BC%D5%B8%D6%82%D5%B2%D5%AB%D5%B6%D5%A5%D6%80%D5%B8%D6%82%D5%B4-%D5%BA/

[ArmeniaR1]

Re: Nagorno-Karabagh: Military Balance Between Armenia & Azerbaijan

There is only 1 of this in the world and it was in Armenia in March? I wonder what it was transporting. The last time this plane was in Armenia (2009), the world record heaviest cargo ever was transported - generator for a power plant. Maybe we got a second generator?

There are soldiers around the plane so probably its military related..

[guess]

Re: Nagorno-Karabagh: Military Balance Between Armenia & Azerbaijan

The removal of the Su-24s from the Azeri Air Force order of battle is great news for us.

Mig 25



Su 24



Mig 21

[Eddo211]

Re: Nagorno-Karabagh: Military Balance Between Armenia & Azerbaijan

^^^photoes 1 and 5 are Mig-25s that also have one foot in the grave....guess again.

[arakeretzig]

Re: Nagorno-Karabagh: Military Balance Between Armenia & Azerbaijan

I paid a visit to Gyumri yesterday. You could not drive around the city without seeing russian soldiers and military vehicles. very nice city btw