44 Days

In the 44 Day War of 2020 the armed forces of Azerbaijan began the liberation of its Karabakh region, which had been under Armenian occupation since the First Karabakh War of the early 1990s. Three years later, in 2023, that liberation was completed by a short military operation which recovered the final separatist holdout. This book tells the story of the original Armenian occupation of Karabakh and surrounding regions, which came out of the collapse of the USSR and involved the forced migration of around 750,000 Azerbaijanis. It deals with the failure of three decades of diplomacy to resolve the conflict, despite the breeches of international law and illegal character of the occupation regime. The book examines how the conflict, frozen over three decades, restarted after the election of a reforming Prime Minister in Armenia. It analyses the various political and military aspects of the 44 Day War and Russia's role in the region before, during and after the event. It also reveals the outstanding leadership and statesmanship of the Aliyevs in taking Azerbaijan from the catastrophe of the 1990s to the full liberation of the national territory in 2023.