Azerbaijanis, the Armenian population, still a majority in Nagorno-Karabakh, approved the creation of an independent state. However, the Constitution of the USSR was the instrument in accordance with which only the fifteen Soviet Republics could vote for independence and Nagorno-Karabakh was not one of the Soviet Republics. A Soviet proposal for enhanced autonomy for Nagorno-Karabakh within Azerbaijan satisfied neither side and subsequently led to the eruption of war between Armenia-backed Nagorno-Karabakh and Azerbaijan. First Nagorno-Karabakh War The struggle over Nagorno-Karabakh escalated after both Armenia and Azerbaijan attained independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. In the post-Soviet power vacuum, military action between Azerbaijan and Armenia was heavily influenced by the Russian military. Extensive Russian military support was exposed by the Head of the Standing Commission of the Russian Duma, General Lev Rokhlin. He had claimed that munitions worth one billion US dollars had been illegally transferred to Armenia between 1992 and 1996. According to Armenian news agency Noyan Tapan, Rokhlin openly lobbied for the interests of Azerbaijan. According to The Washington Times, Western intelligence sources said that the weapons played a crucial role in Armenia's seizure of large areas of Azerbaijan. Other Western sources dispute that assessment, because Russia continued to provide military support to Azerbaijan, as well, throughout the military conflict. Russian Minister of Defense Igor Rodionov in his letter to Aman Tuleyev, Minister of cooperation with CIS countries, said that a Defense Ministry commission had determined that a large quantity of Russian weapons, including 84 T-72 tanks and 50 armored personnel carriers, were illegally transferred to Armenia between 1994 and 96, after the ceasefire, for free and without authorization by the Russian government. The Washington Times article suggested that Russia's military support for Armenia was aimed to force "pro-Western Azerbaijan and its strategic oil reserves into Russia's orbit". Armenia has officially denied any such weapons delivery. Both sides used mercenaries. Mercenaries from Russia and other CIS countries fought on the Armenian side, and some of them were killed or captured by the Azerbaijan army. According to The Wall Street Journal, Azerbaijani President Heydər Əliyev recruited thousands of mujahedeen fighters from Afghanistan and mercenaries from Iran and elsewhere, and brought in even more Turkish officers to organize his army. The Washington Post discovered that Azerbaijan hired more than 1,000 guerrilla fighters from Afghanistan's radical prime minister Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. Meanwhile, Turkey and Iran supplied trainers, and the republic also was