Operation Ring

Operation Ring (Russian: Операция «Кольцо», romanized: Operatsia Kol'tso; Armenian: «Օղակ» գործողություն, Oghak gortsoghut'yun), known in Azerbaijan as Operation Chaykand (Azerbaijani: Çaykənd əməliyyatı) 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. 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. 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." Some authors have also described the actions of the joint Soviet and Azerbaijani force as ethnic cleansing. The military operation was accompanied by systematic and gross human rights abuses.