Second Nagorno‑Karabakh War (2020)

The morning the shells returned

On the morning of 27 September 2020, villages in a stony, wind‑blown belt that had known war before woke to a new thunder. Reports from both sides described heavy artillery, rocket barrages, and columns of men and machines moving toward contested hilltops. For residents near the line of contact — in Stepanakert (Khankendi), Hadrut, Fuzuli, Jabrayil and the scattered villages in between — the sound was terrifyingly familiar. For others, the scale and speed of the fighting felt like a new chapter.

This was not a single battlefield. It was a ring of ridges and valleys inside and around Nagorno‑Karabakh: the enclave’s fortified highlands and the adjacent Azerbaijani districts of Fuzuli, Jabrayil, Zangilan, Qubadli (Qubadli/Gubadli), Aghdam, Kalbajar and Lachin. Here, lines drawn by a 1994 ceasefire had frozen an unresolved political dispute but could not erase memory, grievance, or the military preparations two states had quietly pursued for decades.

A conflict that grew out of a frozen map

To understand September 2020 you have to go back to the collapse of the Soviet system and the slide into interethnic war. Nagorno‑Karabakh is a mountainous region inside the borders of the Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic but with an ethnic Armenian majority. From the late 1980s through a brutal war that ended in 1994, Armenian forces, backed politically and materially by Armenia, secured control over Nagorno‑Karabakh and seven neighbouring districts that had belonged to Azerbaijan. The 1994 ceasefire stopped the killing but it did not resolve who belonged where. Hundreds of thousands of Azerbaijanis were displaced in the process.

For the next quarter‑century the conflict smoldered. Diplomacy through the OSCE Minsk Group produced occasional statements and proposals but no durable settlement. Skirmishes flared repeatedly — most notably the April 2016 “Four‑Day War” — and both militaries refreshed arsenals and tactics. By the late 2010s, Azerbaijan’s rising oil revenue had funded major arms purchases. Ankara deepened ties with Baku. On the Armenian side, the 2018 Velvet Revolution brought Nikol Pashinyan to power and political change, but Armenia’s security relationship with Russia remained the defining external factor.

What changed more fundamentally was technology. The 2020 fighting would show, on an unforgiving scale, how airborne sensors, loitering munitions and remotely piloted aircraft could transform ground operations. Turkish Bayraktar TB2s and a variety of loitering munitions, along with precision strikes guided by electronic and satellite feeds, created a much more lethal battlefield for exposed armor and fortified positions.

When the drones reshaped the hilltops

The war’s early days saw rapid, localized advances and attritional battles. Throughout October, Azerbaijani forces pushed in southern sectors toward Hadrut and into parts of Fuzuli and Jabrayil districts. Positions that had seemed impregnable in the 1990s succumbed not only to artillery and infantry but to strikes from the air — unmanned aircraft that could loiter, locate and strike with surgical or kamikaze effect.

The new systems did not win the war by themselves. War remained a grinding mix of firepower and ground maneuver, of trenches and frontal attacks, of fortified summits and supply routes. But aerial reconnaissance and strike drones repeatedly exposed Armenian and Artsakh formations and supply hubs, disrupting resupply, destroying armor and forcing defenders from ridgelines that had been strategic for decades.

Civilians were dragged into the violence. Towns and villages — Stepanakert among them — reported strikes and rocket attacks on residential areas and infrastructure. Human rights groups would later document instances suggesting possible violations of the laws of war, while both governments accused the other of deliberately targeting civilians. The true toll of those allegations was complicated by fog, propaganda, and the chaos of combat.

The fall of Shusha: a turning point at dawn

By early November, Azerbaijani forces were pressing toward Shusha (Armenian: Shushi) — an ancient fortress town that crouches above the lowland capital of Stepanakert, commanding the approaches to the enclave. For Armenians, Shusha was a symbol as much as a military objective; its loss would be both tactical and psychological.

On 8 November 2020, Azerbaijani authorities announced the capture of Shusha. Reports from the battlefield described intense fighting in and around the town. The fall of Shusha broke the defensive geometry that had protected Stepanakert and tilted momentum decisively. Within a day, under intense diplomatic pressure and the immediacy of military setbacks, leaders from Armenia, Azerbaijan and Russia moved to negotiate an end to the fighting.

A Moscow‑brokered silence and the bargain it enforced

The trilateral ceasefire statement was signed on 9 November 2020 and came into effect on 10 November 2020 (Moscow time). Its terms were specific and consequential. It called for a cessation of hostilities; it required Armenia to return control of several districts to Azerbaijan on a timetable — Aghdam by 20 November, Kalbajar by 25 November, and Lachin by 1 December — and it provided for a Russian peacekeeping force to monitor the ceasefire and secure the Lachin corridor that links Armenia to Nagorno‑Karabakh.

The agreement also allowed Azerbaijan to hold territories it had gained during the fighting, including Shusha and large parts of the surrounding districts. Approximately 1,960 Russian peacekeepers deployed to the corridor and other key points to oversee the fragile truce and ensure humanitarian access.

What was remarkable about this settlement was its immediacy: battlefield gains translated into political leverage. The frozen map that had prevailed since 1994 shifted in a matter of weeks. For many Armenians in the affected districts, the realization that their towns would come under Azerbaijani control precipitated another exodus; tens of thousands left areas they had held for decades.

In the chaos that followed: bodies, displacement, and mines

Counting the dead in the middle of war and the months that followed proved difficult and contested. Official tallies by the parties differed; independent analysts produced ranges. Open‑source estimates and later reporting commonly placed combined military deaths in the several thousands — often cited in the range of about 5,000 to 6,500 — while civilian fatalities were generally reported in the low hundreds, with various sources estimating roughly 200–400 civilian deaths. Both sides acknowledged heavy military losses; families continued to seek fuller accounting for the missing.

The human geography of the region changed. An estimated 90,000–100,000 ethnic Armenian civilians left or were displaced from territories that came under Azerbaijani control immediately after the ceasefire. Many Azerbaijanis who had been displaced in the 1990s were named as potential returnees to previously lost areas, and Baku announced ambitious reconstruction plans. But landmine and unexploded-ordnance contamination made returns hazardous and slowed the rehabilitation of roads, schools and water systems.

Beyond people, there was a cultural and environmental cost. Villages bore the scars of shelling and fire. Croplands and pastures were strewn with debris. Claims and counterclaims about damage to cultural and religious sites circulated rapidly, and independent verification was, and often remains, difficult.

A polity reshaped: politics, peacekeepers, and ongoing friction

Inside Armenia, the political consequences were immediate and sharp. Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan faced protests and accusations of capitulation. His government survived a no‑confidence motion but was battered politically. In Azerbaijan, the victory bolstered President Ilham Aliyev’s domestic standing, and public celebrations underscored the national sense of regained territory.

Regionally, Turkey’s open support for Azerbaijan strengthened Ankara‑Baku relations, while Russia’s role — as mediator and the provider of peacekeepers — enhanced Moscow’s influence in the South Caucasus. The deployment of roughly 1,960 Russian troops fundamentally altered security arrangements on the ground and created a buffer that, for a time, reduced active fighting along the major axes.

Humanitarian work moved into the foreground: demining, recovery of bodies, medical care for the wounded, and shelter for the displaced. International organizations and local NGOs mobilized, but the scale of need — and the political sensitivity of aid corridors — made relief complicated and slow in some zones.

Allegations of violations of international humanitarian law — by both sides — led human rights organizations to call for independent investigations. Reports described the use of cluster munitions in populated areas, attacks on civilian infrastructure, and mistreatment of prisoners and detainees. Legal accountability, however, remained uneven and contested.

The war that rewired modern thinking about warfare

Outside the region, analysts and military planners watched closely. The 2020 fighting crystallized a lesson many had been predicting: unmanned systems, reconnaissance drones, loitering munitions and integrated sensor‑strike networks can change the operational calculus, particularly where one side can exploit air‑ground integration to interdict supply routes and destroy armor at range. The conflict spurred doctrinal debates and procurement decisions across NATO and non‑NATO states alike.

At the same time, the war highlighted the limits of external mediation in frozen conflicts. The OSCE Minsk Group’s long effort had produced little that stopped the buildup; when combat resumed it did not prevent the rapid reshaping of territory. The November agreement was mediated by Moscow and imposed a new security architecture that suited Russia’s geopolitical interests.

What did the ceasefire not solve?

The November 2020 settlement stopped large-scale hostilities but left the underlying political question — the status of Nagorno‑Karabakh — unresolved. Minefields, destroyed infrastructure and mutual distrust made any near‑term reconciliation difficult. Families continued to mourn missing relatives, and the pace of reconstruction and return was slow.

Moreover, the ceasefire proved to be a step, not a permanent fix. In the years that followed, incidents and tensions persisted. The Lachin corridor — the lifeline between Armenia and the remaining Armenian communities in Nagorno‑Karabakh — was repeatedly disrupted in 2022 and 2023, producing shortages and international concern. In September 2023, Azerbaijani forces launched a swift operation in the remaining Armenian‑held areas, and authorities in Stepanakert announced they would capitulate. The vast majority of the enclave’s Armenian population fled to Armenia, and the de facto institutions of the Republic of Artsakh announced plans to dissolve. Those events substantially altered the facts the 2020 ceasefire had created, leaving most of Nagorno‑Karabakh effectively under Azerbaijani control.

Voices left in the rubble

Walk the ruined streets of any frontline town and the war becomes personal. Elderly residents who stayed tell of looters and shortages; young men who fought tell of friends who never returned; families carry bundles and documents and the memory of homes they left behind. For Azerbaijanis who had long hoped to return to homes lost in the 1990s, the war offered a painful, costly reclamation. For Armenians who had lived in Nagorno‑Karabakh for generations, the conflict and its aftermath felt like a rupture.

Humanitarian organizations documented children who had seen bombardments and civilians injured by stray munitions. Deminers recounted the slow, methodical work of clearing fields that can hide a mine beneath a single blade of grass. These are the day‑by‑day realities that numbers and maps obscure.

The map that changed and the questions that remain

The Second Nagorno‑Karabakh War rewrote the map that had stood frozen since 1994. It demonstrated how rapid technological change — combined with shifting geopolitics and determined political will — can convert tactical advances into strategic outcomes. It showed the human cost of such transformations: thousands of dead, many more wounded, and many tens of thousands uprooted.

What remains unsettled is how the people of the region will live together or apart going forward. How will demining, reconstruction and reconciliation proceed in a terrain of suspicion? How will legal claims over property and cultural heritage be managed? What mechanisms will the international community rely on to protect civilians and ensure accountability for alleged violations?

Those questions are not academic. They are the daily concerns of displaced families, returning engineers and municipal officials trying to rebuild water pipes and power lines, and the deminers who clear a path so others can return safely. They are also the questions that will determine whether the scars of 2020 harden into a permanent partition, or whether a new, fragile peace can be stitched from the damaged fabric of towns and lives.

A history that keeps changing

History rarely closes in a neat paragraph. The 2020 war was a decisive turning point for the South Caucasus — a violent assertion of what state power and modern weapons could accomplish in weeks — but its effects kept evolving afterward. The trilateral ceasefire and the deployment of Russian peacekeepers did not end the story; subsequent disruptions to the Lachin corridor and the 2023 operation that saw the collapse of Artsakh’s de facto institutions forced another rearrangement of the region’s human geography.

For historians, policymakers and the people who live in these mountains and plains, the war raised urgent questions about security, sovereignty, and the protection of civilians in a region where identities, claims and borders have never been tidy. The photographs — empty streets, shattered windows, a lone figure walking away with a small bundle — are reminders of a conflict that reshaped lives as well as lines on the map.