TRUTH WILL OUT

This year marks the 30th anniversary of the Khojaly Genocide, one of the darkest pages in the history of mankind. Parliaments of sixteen countries, legislators in twenty-four states of the United States have officially recognised the destruction of Khojaly as an act of genocide of the Azerbaijani people. The Khojaly massacre can only be compared with those done in Khatyn, Lidice, Oradour-sur-Glane... On the night of February 26, 1992, 613 civilians of the settlement, including 63 children, 106 women and 70 aged people were slaughtered in Khojaly. Eight families were exterminated completely, while 27 families have only one person survived.

It has now been proven that the responsibility for this most atrocious crime lies on Armenia's political elite. Individuals directly involved in the genocide of Azerbaijanis in Khojaly have held high-ranked positions in Armenia for decades. Among them is the former president of Armenia, Serzh Sargsyan, who has made no secret of his involvement in the massacre.

But there is another aspect of this tragedy associated with the role of the 366th Guards Motorised Rifle Regiment stationed in then Stepanakert (Khankendi) since Soviet times.

Right after the massacre in Khojaly, Bahadur Gayibov, director of publishing house Azerbaijan, received a March 26, 1992 copy of Советский воин, a newspaper published by the 23rd division hosting the 366th regiment.

This was the only surviving copy; all other copies were destroyed by order of Lieutenant General Joseph Ohanyan, deputy commander of the Transcaucasian District Military Command, because of the article titled Evacuation-366 (Вывоз-366) by commando officer Viktor Shevchenko. Gayibov decided to publish the article immediately in the Səhər newspaper.

It is no accident that a unique copy of the newspaper fell into the hands of Bahadur Gayibov, for the publishing house was flooded with people who wanted to tell about the Khojaly tragedy. One of them was Sariya Talibova, a journalist from Khojaly, who later worked for Səhər.

The first brochure telling about the Khojaly Genocide was published by Azerbaijan Publishing House under the title Khojaly. The Last Day (Ходжалы. День последний). Gayibov, the famous Azerbaijani poet and publicist Alexander Grich and I were working on the brochure when we found out that there were no photographs to include in it but a video footage made by the late National Hero of Azerbaijan, Chingiz Mustafayev. A photography specialist from AzerTAG took the images right from the VHS cassette. Thus, all the photographs of the Khojaly genocide circulating around the world till now are snapshots from the same video footage by Chingiz Mustafayev made on the scene of tragedy.

And some time later Bahadur Gayibov received a truly sensational letter from Viktor Shevchenko... 

Gayibov underlined that Shevchenko's article revealed the true essence of how the CIS troops allegedly observed neutrality: "One can understand the feelings of horror, hatred and disgust experienced by a Russian commando officer tasked, together with other fellow officers, to evacuate the 366th regiment from Khankendi. But let us think for a moment: this disgust and horror is even worse, because they concern his former companions in arms. I said ‘former’ because a truly honest man would not call a mercenary, drunkard, criminal, money launderer his fellow... This is what the personnel of the 366th Regiment was made of." 

It was this sense of the Truth that prompted Viktor Shevchenko to break silence about what he saw during the evacuation of his regiment. And he obviously had a gut feeling that a tragedy like the one in Khojaly was possible. Shevchenko writes that according to numerous eyewitness accounts, including those of conscripts, almost all standard military equipment, and often personnel of the 336th regiment were "leased" to Armenian fighters. It was General Ohanyan who commanded the withdrawal of the regiment from Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast, and he did his best to leave most of the weapons and armoured vehicles to his bloodthirsty compatriots.

A quote from Вывоз-366: "The valiant 366th Motorised Rifle Regiment was feasting exuberantly under the canopy of agricultural warehouses. Drunken soldiers and officers, sprawled around campfires, were chanting songs. A drunk wife of one of the officers was lamenting over a missing bundle of dollars. They were trying to calm her down; commanders even lined up the soldiers to search for the bundle, warning them not to make things worse and return the money.”

The above events took place in Stepanakert (Khankendi), where a "bundle of dollars" was an unprecedented sum of money, a fortune! Where did the officer's wife get the dollars from, when the military were paid salaries irregularly at the time?

Another quote from the article: “As a token of appreciation, Armenians said good-bye to the third battalion of the regiment with lots of boxes of cognac bottles, refreshments and fraternal hugs. The hoods of cars replaced the ‘sufferers’ the regular tables; they were provided with meat for shashlik and food supplies for the night. What for? Perhaps the answer to this question was hidden in soldiers' duffel-bags stuffed full of money to be taken back home? Or in the bulky purses of officers' wives crammed with bundles of currency.”

Yet another quote from Shevchenko's article: “Commandos had no idea that the entire motorised rifle battalion was capable of 'not noticing' the disappearance of its own weapons, brand new equipment and ammunition. Commandos had to wait in their armoured cars for a group of generals led by Ohanyan, who urgently needed to solve ‘some issues’ with the leadership of Stepanakert. Lieutenant-Colonel Yuri Zarvigorov, commander of the 366th regiment, visited the second battalion during this time. By the time the generals returned, there was not a single combat vehicle or small arms left in the battalion. Also, hundreds of commandos are ready to admit how shamefully they handed over all the weapons and equipment of the 366th regiment to the [Armenian] militants. The event was presented as an ‘organised withdrawal secured’ by commandos. But in fact, it was not a withdrawal, but an evacuation of military personnel with lapsed morals, sense of discipline and military honour. Commandos evacuated by air less than a third of the regiment's one hundred and fifty armoured vehicles. Eight ultramodern tanks, about a hundred combat vehicles, self-propelled anti-aircraft guns, howitzers and ammunition, three-quarters of small arms were left to individuals with lapsed humane qualities.”

Further on in the article, the author admitted that there were “a huge number of audacious facts beyond the scope of this story that cannot be made public: competent authorities are said to be working on them and launched an investigation."

Alas, there was essentially no investigation. The regiment was disbanded and the scandal was hushed up. But the weapons of the ill-fated regiment continued to shoot and kill Azerbaijani civilians, including children, women, old people... Armoured vehicles of the regiment against the civilian population, completely unarmed. This clearly shows exactly how Armenia won the First Garabagh War.

But the Second Garabagh War restored historical justice. Today we can only guess that among the armoured vehicles displayed in the Trophies Park in Baku are those of the 366th regiment that once shelled the peaceful Azerbaijani villages of Garabagh.

Back in 1985, the 366th regiment, which was part of the 23rd Division of the 4th Army, was transferred from Kirovabad (Ganja) to Stepanakert (Khankendi). By the way, the regiment moved there almost immediately after Mikhail Gorbachev’s election as the Secretary General of the USSR. This can hardly be considered a coincidence. 

The regiment was supposed to have 1,800 military personnel. However, by February 1992, there were only 630 of them left. Of this number, 129 were officers, including 49 ethnic Armenians. Whether it was sufficiently ready to conduct combat operations in accordance with the classical military standards is a big question. But at that time it was a huge imbalance.

By February 1992, Azerbaijan's national security institutions were only making their first steps. So, the Armenian military were essentially confronted by forces of territorial self-defence. In fact, by the time, Azerbaijan controlled only Khojaly and Shusha, while the residents of about 50 Azerbaijani settlements had already been expelled. In other words, there was a situation when the Soviet troops stationed in Azerbaijan and Armenia were subordinate to Moscow, while in Garabagh, epicentre of the conflict, they were steadily shifting to the control of Armenians.  

Even a single battalion with full weaponry and equipment could radically change the situation in favour of Armenians. By the way, the 366th regiment had already committed acts of violence against Azerbaijani civilians in 1990-1991.  Khojaly was the most brutal and bloody episode of this confrontation, but not the only one. With the help of weapons, armoured vehicles and often the staff of the 366th regiment the Armenian armed groups were able to capture not only Khojaly, but also the villages of Meshali, Malibeyli, Karkijahan, and Garadaghli. Every such episode was accompanied by massacres of civilians.

There is plenty of evidence showing the involvement of the 366th Regiment in the Khojaly Genocide. For example, according to the report published by the Memorial Society “almost all refugees from Khojaly reported the involvement of the members of the 366th regiment in the storming of the town, with some of them entering the town.”

On March 11, 1992, an article published under the title titled Карабах: война до победного конца? (Garabagh: War Till Victory?) in Красная Звезда bashfully mumbled: "...Despite the categorical orders of the district military command, some troopers of the 366th Guards Motorised Rifle Regiment took part in the combat operation near Khojaly together with the Armenian residents of Garabagh in the twentieth days of February. There are at least two such cases in record. During the evacuation of the regiment's personnel, commandos checked several servicemen and found large amounts of money, including in foreign currency."

Also, two sergeants, a Russian and a Kazakh, broke into the Günün Ekranı programme aired on AzTV, Azerbaijan’s state-run television company, claiming they had escaped from the 366th Regiment because they could not tolerate what was happening there: getting soldiers drunk, taking military equipment out at night, purposeful shelling of the Azerbaijani villages. This also confirms Shevchenko's testimony. And it also shows that there were decent people who did not want to get involved in such a disgraceful act.

Unfortunately, the 366th regiment was by no means the only source of weapons for the Armenian fighters. As Russian experts later admitted, a significant number of weapons were brought into Armenia from abroad in 1988-1989, after the catastrophic earthquake in Armenia – those in charge could accomplish the mission easily, as the cargo aircraft with humanitarian aid were not subject to customs inspection.

Finally, there was yet another crime committed by Armenian terrorists that provides ground for making assumptions. On April 8, 1991, a group of Armenian militants in Rostov-on-Don shot dead Colonel Vladimir Blakhotin, deputy head of internal troops of the Ministry of Internal Affairs in the North Caucasus and Transcaucasia. According to officials, terrorists wanted to kill the former commandant of Stepanakert, Major-General Alexander Safonov, but mistakenly shot Blakhotin instead.

However, there are a number of circumstances which cast doubt on this version. Safonov and Blakhotin lived in the same building, but used different entrances. For several days terrorists have controlled the entrance to Blakhotin’s home and timed his movements. Also, the colonel was practically shot point-blank. It is impossible not to identify the victim from this position. It is impossible to mix up Safonov's UAZ with Blakhotin's Volga either. And the strangest thing of all was that Blakhotin, as the deputy commander of internal troops of the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs in the North Caucasus and Transcaucasia, was responsible for the withdrawal of military equipment from Garabagh. Internal troops controlled the roads and certainly were well aware of the ongoing events. So, Blakhotin was by all accounts an inconvenient witness.

Later there would be a plenty of scandals in the history of independent Armenia related to machinations with weapons. But they did not save Armenia from the defeat.