Russian general blames Soviet leaders for Karabakh conflict
MOSCOW – A former Soviet military official who served in Nagorno-Karabakh, an Azerbaijani region that is at the center of the country’s bitter dispute with Armenia, has blamed the USSR’s leaders for defending the Armenians, who committed attacks against Azerbaijanis during the Karabakh war.
Deputy commander of the Soviet interior troops in Nagorno-Karabakh, Maj.-Gen. Genrikh Malyushkin said USSR leader Mikhail Gorbachev was the main culprit of the Karabakh problem, a conflict that was sparked by Armenian territorial claims in the late 1980s.
"Gorbachev had failed to issue a single warning to the Armenians, in spite of what they did to Azerbaijanis in Nagorno-Karabakh," Malyushkin said.
He said further that the Armenian troops were responsible for the killings of Soviet troops in Karabakh.
"When I served as a deputy commander in Karabakh, the Armenians killed eight Soviet soldiers. One of those killed was Oleg Babak. He was slain for countering the Armenians during their attack on the Azerbaijanis in the Yukhari Chibikhli village of Gubadli. But the Soviet leadership failed to respond to this. The killed soldiers were buried there.
"The Armenians were receiving weapons from the USSR military bases stationed in Armenia. At the time, the attackers included mostly university students. They were paid a lot for these actions," Malyushkin said.
He noted that even when the Armenians were arrested for their crimes, phone calls were made from Moscow and the detainees were immediately released. Such orders were usually made from the USSR’s interior ministry, Malyushkin said.
Malyushkin added that he had seen former Armenian president Robert Kocharyan "with a submachine gun fighting Azerbaijan".
About 20 percent of Azerbaijani territory has been under the occupation of the Armenian armed forces since the brutal war that claimed some 30,000 lives and displaced about a million Azerbaijanis. OSCE-brokered peace talks have been largely fruitless so far.