By Robert Zargarian
YEREVAN (Azatutyun) — Avoiding another confrontation with angry parents of fallen soldiers, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and other senior officials did not visit Armenia’s main military cemetery on Tuesday to mark the second anniversary of the devastating war in Nagorno-Karabakh.
The war broke out early on September 27, 2020 when Azerbaijan launched a large-scale military offensive along the Armenian-Azerbaijani “line of contact” around Karabakh. The Azerbaijani army captured four districts south of Karabakh’s southern Hadrut district and the town of Shushi (Shusha) before a Russian-brokered ceasefire stopped the hostilities on November 10.
Baku also regained control in the following weeks over the three other districts occupied by Karabakh Armenian forces in the early 1990s. The truce accord negotiated by Russian President Vladimir Putin also led to the deployment of 2,000 Russian peacekeeping forces in Karabakh.
According to the Armenian authorities, 3,825 Armenian soldiers and 80 civilians were killed during the six-week war. At least 203 other servicemen remain unaccounted for.
Early in the morning, the parents of several dozen soldiers killed in action gathered at the Yerablur Military Pantheon in Yerevan to try to prevent Pashinyan from laying flowers there as part of planned official ceremonies to mark the war anniversary. They hold him responsible for the deaths of their sons.