Ethnic cleansing of Armenians committed by Soviet and Soviet Azerbaijani forces
This article is about 1991 Soviet conflict. For the last part of the Battle of Stalingrad, see Operation Koltso.
Operation Ring
Part of Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, First Nagorno-Karabakh war, and Dissolution of the Soviet Union
Date
30 April – 15 May 1991
Location
Khanlar and Shahumyan districts of the Azerbaijan SSR; Shusha, Mardakert and Hadrut districts of Nagorno-Karabakh; Noyemberyan, Goris, Ijevan and Shamshadin districts of the Armenian SSR.
Result
Deportation of at least 5,000 Armenians from the region[1]
Belligerents
Armenian militants Armenian Revolutionary Federation
Soviet Union
Azerbaijan SSR
Commanders and leaders
Tatul Krpeyan †[2] Simon Achikgyozyan †
Ayaz Mutallibov Viktor Polyanichko Vladislav Safonov
Units involved
Soviet Army
Soviet 4th Army
23rd Guards Motor Rifle Division
Ministry of Internal Affairs of the USSR (MVD)
MVD Internal Troops
MVD spetsnaz company
Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Azerbaijan SSR
OMON of the Azerbaijan SSR
Strength
Unknown
Unknown
Casualties and losses
Unknown; civilian deaths, including ethnic Armenian police force, estimated to be 30–50 5,000 deported from Shahumyan region
Unknown
v
t
e
First Nagorno-Karabakh War
Civilian clashes and massacres
Askeran
Sumgait
Gugark
Stepanakert−Shusha
Kirovabad
Baku
Black January
Baganis Ayrum
Gushchular−Malibeyli
Garadaghly
Khojaly
Maraga
Offensives
Ring
Stepanakert
Shusha
Goranboy
Mardakert−Martuni
Lachin
Kalbajar
Aghdam
Summer 1993
Horadiz
Kalbajar
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.[3] 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.[4] 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."[5] Some authors have also described the actions of the joint Soviet and Azerbaijani force as ethnic cleansing.[6] The military operation was accompanied by systematic and gross human rights abuses.[7]
^De Waal, Thomas (2003). Black Garden: Armenia and Azerbaijan Through Peace and War. New York University Press. p. 118.
^De Waal, Thomas (2013). Black Garden: Armenia and Azerbaijan Through Peace and War (2nd (revised and updated) ed.). New York University Press. p. 116.
^De Waal, Thomas. Black Garden: Armenia and Azerbaijan Through Peace and War. New York: New York University Press, 2003, p. 114. ISBN 0-8147-1945-7.
^Gokhman, M. "Karabakhskaia voinа," [The Karabakh War] Russkaia Mysl. 29 November 1991.
^De Waal. Black Garden, p. 120.
^Melander, Erik in "State Manipulation or Nationalist Ambition" in The Role of the State in West Asia, eds. Annika Rabo and Bo Utas. New York: I.B. Tauris, 2006, p. 173. ISBN 91-86884-13-1.
^Human Rights Watch/Helsinki (1994). Azerbaijan: Seven years of conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh. New York: Human Rights Watch, p. 9.
Oblast during the First Nagorno-Karabakh War. He was killed during OperationRing by the Soviet Azerbaijani OMON (special police). Born in the village...
Operation Koltso (OperationRing) was the last part of the Battle of Stalingrad. It resulted in the capitulation of the remaining Axis forces encircled...
mathematics, a commutative ring is a ring in which the multiplication operation is commutative. The study of commutative rings is called commutative algebra...
to which a certain binary operation fails to be commutative. There are different definitions used in group theory and ring theory. The commutator of two...
become known as the "founding fathers of ROH"). In its first year of operation, Ring of Honor confined itself to staging live events in a limited number...
allows the guest to run under Ring 0. VT-x introduces VMX Root/Non-root Operation: The hypervisor runs in VMX Root Operation mode, possessing the highest...
Look up ring in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. Ring may refer to: Ring (jewellery), a round band, usually made of metal, worn as ornamental jewelry To...
A slip ring is an electromechanical device that allows the transmission of power and electrical signals from a stationary to a rotating structure. A slip...
Operation Cathedral was a police operation that broke up a major international child pornography ring called The Wonderland Club operating over the Internet...
The rings of Saturn are the most extensive and complex ring system of any planet in the Solar System. They consist of countless small particles, ranging...
In ring theory, a branch of abstract algebra, a quotient ring, also known as factor ring, difference ring or residue class ring, is a construction quite...
associative algebras and non-associative algebras. Given an integer n, the ring of real square matrices of order n is an example of an associative algebra...
Boolean ring R is a ring for which x2 = x for all x in R, that is, a ring that consists of only idempotent elements. An example is the ring of integers...
a field or a module over a commutative ring. The collection of all structures of a given type (same operations and same laws) is called a variety in universal...
Nagorno-Karabakh War, its population was mostly Armenian and was expelled during OperationRing in 1991. While the Shahumyan region was not part of the Nagorno-Karabakh...
Stalingrad, which forced the STAVKA to divert the 2nd Guards to block it. OperationRing (Koltso) was put on hold. As of December 16 the 214th was in the 24th...
The Lucy spy ring was an anti-Nazi World War II espionage operation headquartered in Switzerland and run by Rudolf Roessler, a German refugee. Its story...
and have similar properties to those operations defined for the integers. Ring theory studies the structure of rings, their representations, or, in different...
(possibly an infinity), equipped with componentwise operations. It is a direct product in the category of rings. Since direct products are defined up to an isomorphism...
place, surrendered or disappeared into the darkness. After a pause, OperationRing resumed on January 18. North of the railroad the 15th Guards shattered...
New Jersey state police, against an illegal nationwide gambling ring. The operation was made public on February 6, 2006. Rick Tocchet, an assistant coach...
village. In 1991, the second operation of OperationRing took place in and around Voskepar. This was a military operation conducted by Soviet Internal...