Deep in the mountains of the Karabakh range, worn thin by its grinding offensive in Ukraine, Russia’s armed forces last month found themselves caught in another war.
With no tanks, trenches or warplanes, and largely hidden from international view, a contingent of roughly 2,000 of Moscow’s troops played a key role in deciding the explosive end to a lesser-known conflict.
Nagorno-Karabakh — a self-governed enclave carved from a southern corner of Azerbaijan that is home to mostly ethnic Armenians — has long been trapped in the eye of a swirling geopolitical storm of duelling world powers.
The area is known for its intermittent outbreaks of heavy fighting in recent decades.
Monika and her husband Georgi fled Nagorno-Karabakh during an outbreak of war with Azerbaijan in 2020, but returned on promises made by a Russian-brokered peace agreement.
The deal established Russian peacekeepers to enforce a fragile ceasefire between the two former Soviet republics and guard the only road left linking the enclave with Armenia, the so-called Lachin corridor.
Negotiation efforts have failed to provide a solution to the conflict.(ABC News: Tom Joyner)
However, last week, the couple found themselves retracing the same escape route through the mountains they took three years earlier — this time once and for all.
Armenia and Azerbaijan hold competing claims to Nagorno-Karabakh, which was kept relatively under control during the Soviet Union’s rule, but spilled over into conflict once it collapsed and the enclave declared independence.
This became known as the First Karabakh War, which resulted in roughly 30,000 causalities, before Russia brokered a ceasefire agreement in 1994, leaving the enclave as de-facto independent.
There have been intermittent clashes between both sides in the intervening years, with Moscow’s peacekeepers often used to enforce peace in the area.
The region erupted into heavy fighting again in 2020, descending into what became known as the Second Karabakh War, after a summer of cross-border attacks.
Azerbaijan reclaimed parts of the territory it lost to Armenia decades prior and the fighting escalated before a ceasefire was brokered again by Russia after six weeks.
Since then, a fragile peace has existed between both sides.
But on September 19, Azerbaijani forces, claiming a counter-terror operation, launched a large-scale blitz on the enclave, seizing it and killing hundreds of people, including civilians.
“Russians were there on paper, but in reality they didn’t protect us,” said Monika, who drove for nearly two days from her village in the enclave to the Armenian border.
The separatist government’s surrender a day later triggered a mass exodus of more than 100,000 ethnic Armenians over the border to Armenia, fearing for their future.
Once they had reached safety, Georgi pulled over for a final glimpse at the jagged peaks on the horizon where he had spent his childhood, later working as a welder and raising a family.
“I have no words,” he said, shaking his head and turning away to hide his tears.
Azerbaijan has said it wants Armenians to stay in Nagorno-Karabakh, and that it would integrate and protect those who decide to remain there. But few believe the government’s claims.
Some fleeing barely had time to return home to gather their belongings before they joined a snaking queue of cars and trucks through the single road leading to neighbouring Armenia.
“Why did the world look away?” said Anahit, 78, a Nagorno-Karabakh resident who hitched a ride to the border after she was separated from her husband.
Days earlier, her brother-in-law had been killed instantly when an Azerbaijani shell detonated on his home as he tried to evacuate.
The family searched desperately for his remains but could only find one leg, blown apart from the rest of his body, which they buried near their home.
“Everywhere is covered in blood,” she said.
As Azerbaijani forces bore down on Nagorno-Karabakh, Russian peacekeepers sworn to protect its residents instead appeared to stand back.
“Russian peacekeepers failed,” said Kirill Krivosheev, a journalist at Russia’s Kommersant newspaper.
“Russia is weaker than ever in its ‘Soviet diplomacy’. Nobody relies on Russia’s moral authority because of the war in Ukraine.”
Moscow has military bases in Armenia and the country is deeply dependent on Russia for its economy and defence.
The two have for decades developed close cultural ties – many Armenians speak Russian as a second language.
But the perceived failure of its troops to intervene in Nagorno-Karabakh has worn thin residents’ patience with Russian leader Vladimir Putin.
“We trusted the Russians too much,” said Anush Navasardyan, a school teacher from Nagorno-Karabakh, who had fled to an apartment in Goris, an Armenian town just over the border.
Ms Navasardyan heard shots ring out as Azerbaijani soldiers encircled her village, frantically opening the door to the stable where her four cows were kept so they might have a chance to escape too.
Mr Putin has batted away criticism that his troops in Nagorno-Karabakh allowed Azerbaijani forces to swoop in unimpeded, but analysts say their failure to protect ethnic Armenians shows the Kremlin’s crumbling influence in the region.
Azerbaijan has also rejected Moscow’s role in the mass exodus of Armenians from the enclave, as well as accusations of ethnic cleansing.
“It’s not Russia’s business to interfere,” said Esmira Jafarova, a former advisor to Azerbaijan’s government on international issues.
“These people [Armenian refugees] are leaving because they are not sure about the future. It’s not the result of any kind of harassment or forceful action on the part of Azerbaijan.”
But the accounts of people fleeing the territory tell a vastly different story, said Anoush Baghdassarian, a human rights lawyer working for the Center for Truth and Justice, an Armenian organisation based in the capital Yerevan.
“This is ethnic cleansing. It’s important to demonstrate the forced displacement of these people,” she said.
For days, Ms Baghdassarian stood in the centre of Goris’ main square, interviewing some of the thousands of refugees pouring over the border from Nagorno-Karabakh.
Her recorded testimonies might one day be used in an international tribunal, she added.
The Azerbaijani seizure of Nagorno-Karabakh has shaken residents of Armenian towns and villages like Goris, who fear it could embolden Azerbaijan to push further into the country.
“Goris is totally under the watch of the enemy,” said Aram Musakhanyan, a school teacher, who with others in the town formed a security committee partly to help prepare residents for possible invasion.
Aram Musakhanyan is preparing for the possibility of the conflict escalating further.(ABC News: Tom Joyner)
“Goris in particular and the region in general is located in such a position that with modern weapons, we could be cut off from the rest of Armenia within hours.”
Azerbaijan’s authoritarian president Ilham Aliyev has touted the idea of creating a land corridor linking Azerbaijan to its landlocked Nakhchivan enclave, on the other side of Armenia.
Peace talks between Azerbaijan and Armenia are scheduled on Thursday in Spain as leaders of the two countries meet on neutral ground in the hopes of hashing out another peace agreement.
“Everyone is tired of war,” said Ms Jafarova.
“So we’re looking forward to seeing that Armenia will be on the same page as Azerbaijan and finally we can move forward.”
The same is too late for the separatist leaders in Nagorno-Karabakh, whose enclave has been dissolved and most of its people driven from their homes.
Its president, Samvel Shakhramanyan, announced last week he had ordered the dismantling of the breakaway state’s institutions by the end of the year.
Its de-facto capital, Stepanakert, is like a scene from a zombie apocalypse – its streets deserted and cars and buildings suddenly abandoned.
Former residents say the events of the past few weeks have taught them a bitter lesson.
“We are completely alone,” said Monika.
“We need the time to digest what has happened.”