The battle for Shusha Fighting in Nagorno-Karabakh has reached a turning point. Here are the most recent developments in the conflict zone.

• The Nagorno-Karabakh army began experiencing a series of defeats in early October, when the Azerbaijani army broke through on the plain along the border between Nagorno-Karabakh and Iran. The terrain there favored Azerbaijan’s mechanized units, which had a clear advantage over the Armenian side.
• Azerbaijani forces pushed back against Armenian counter attacks and quickly cleared Nagorno-Karabakh’s entire border with Iran, going directly towards Armenia. After that, they turned their offensive to the mountainous regions in the North. At first, Azerbaijan’s army tried to break through the ravines in the West, targeting Lachin — a town located on the road that connects Armenia to Shusha and Stepanakert. However, after a few days of fighting, the Azerbaijani forces, who were constantly exposed to artillery fire from Armenia proper, got bogged down in the mountains a few kilometers from Lachin. One video from a reconnaissance drone, which the Armenian Defense Ministry published on November 6, shows a defeated Azerbaijani convoy several kilometers away from the town. When exactly the video was filmed remains unknown. 

• After the relative setback at Lachin, the Azerbaijanis launched an offensive on a no less inaccessible terrain — in the ravines and surrounding wooded mountains, which could lead them from the Iranian border directly to the center of Nagorno-Karabakh — to Shusha and on to Stepanakert. At first, the Armenian military’s spokespeople reported that small Azerbaijani reconnaissance groups were operating in the mountains and were being “destroyed.” But on October 29, Stepanakert and Yerevan realized the full extent of the danger of the situation: Nagorno-Karabakh’s president Arayik Harutyunyan released a video, in which he admitted that the enemy was on the outskirts of Shusha; he recalled the Armenian saying “Who controls Shusha, controls Karabakh” and called on all Armenians to stand up and protect the “holy city.”
• For a week, battles continued in the mountain range and the ravines south of the Shusha; the Armenian army used the same tactics as in Lachin — artillery raids and ambushes targeting Azerbaijani units trying to advance on the city. And yet, by November 4, the Azerbaijanis had managed to gain firm control over the mountains south of Shusha and the road from Shusha towards Lachin. On the night of November 5, Azerbaijani special forces reached the road and went directly towards the cliff that Shusha stands on.
• From that moment on, the arriving Armenian reinforcements tried to dislodge the special forces (as well as approaching Azerbaijani reinforcements), but they seemingly didn’t succeed. Journalists working on the Armenian side captured close combat along the road on November 5; judging by the geolocation of the videos, the Azerbaijanis managed to extend control over the road leading to the outskirts of Shusha. 

The Armenians are now tasked with trying to dislodge the Azerbaijani special forces from the Shuha—Lachin road and from the surrounding forests. They don’t have another choice. If Armenia and the Nagorno-Karabakh army do not launch a successful counteroffensive in the coming days, they will lose a critical supply line and a threat to the unrecognized republic’s capital will emerge (as previously mentioned, Stepanakert is located just a dozen kilometers from Shuha). It will be impossible to hold on to remaining territory and the hope for a compromise political solution to the conflict will be lost completely.

In addition, Armenia (and it’s sympathizers among politicians from Russia, France, and the United States) doesn’t have any “material” left to offer when it comes to brokering a compromise.

On October 29, Russian President Vladimir Putin presented the following as a possible “plan that will suit both parties”:

• Armenia gives up the Azerbaijani territories that didn’t belong to the Soviet Nagorno-Karabakh region when it occupied them during the war in the 1990s “to ensure the security of Karabakh.”
• The actual status of Nagorno-Karabakh will be determined later.
• The parties declare a ceasefire and, as Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov stated, peacekeepers must be brought to the line of contact (Russia is ready to cooperate with other countries in this regard, including Azerbaijan’s main ally — Turkey). 

In the same vein of “reaching a compromise that will suit all parties,” Iran presented a plan to Moscow, Yerevan, and Baku last week — the details of which have yet to be disclosed.

However, Azerbaijan has already occupied almost all of the territory that Putin planned to “give up” in exchange for both a postponed decision on Nagorno-Karabakh’s status and a ceasefire. The only remaining territories are the Lachin District and the Kalbajar District in the North — along which runs the only remaining road connecting Stepanakert to Armenia that hasn’t been cut off by the Azerbaijani army. That said, this road is of little use as a supply line (the journey takes many hours and appears to be under fire from Azerbaijani forces in several locations). But, in the event of a military disaster, Nagorno-Karabakh’s military and civilian authorities could use it for evacuations.

There’s little hope that Nagorno-Karabakh’s forces will avoid defeat in this situation. Apparently, the Nagorno-Karabakh army has tapped all of its reserves, as has Armenia, which formally isn’t involved in the conflict, but is almost officially supplying Stepanakert with entire units of reservists and volunteers, as well as equipment. So far, the Armenian forces have yet to launch a successful counter offensive and all of them have resulted in heavy losses. This is due in part to the Azerbaijani sides’ rapid advance on Shusha.