Operation Ring, known in Azerbaijan as the Chaykend Operation, was the codename for the May 1991 military operation conducted by Soviet Internal Security Forces and OMON units in the Armenian populated regions of Western Azerbaijan in the Lesser Caucasus mountains, the Shusha, Martakert and Hadrut regions of the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast, and along the northwestern border of the Armenian SSR in Noyemberyan, Goris and Tavush.
Officially dubbed a “passport checking operation,” the ostensible goal launched by the Soviet Union’s internal and defence ministries was to disarm Armenian militia detachments that had been organized in “[illegally] armed formations.” The operation involved the use of ground troops who accompanied 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. Following this, the Armenian inhabitants of 17 villages across the Shusha and Hadrut regions were forcibly removed.
British journalist Thomas de Waal has described Ring as the Soviet Union’s first and only civil war. Some authors have also described the actions of the joint Soviet and Azerbaijani force as ethnic cleansing. The military operation was accompanied by systematic and gross human rights abuses.
