title: Freddie Fox (actor)

text: In February 2018, Fox starred as the British Commander Pope in "Black '47", Ireland's first historical film on the Great Famine of 1847. Released in the same month at the to great acclaim was James Erskine's "The Ice King" narrated by Fox which profiles the life of John Curry who revolutionised ice skating from a dated sport into an exalted art form and became the first openly gay Olympian when homosexuality was still illegal. "Little White Lies" remarks, "Fox affects Curry's distinctive accent with remarkable accuracy." In "An Ideal Husband", which ran from May to July 2018 at the Vaudeville Theatre to critical acclaim, Freddie starred with his father Edward for the first time playing fictional father and son the Earl of Caversham and Lord Goring. According to "Financial Times", Freddie "effortlessly delivers that mix of insouciance and gravity" and, for "The Telegraph","embodies the Wildean spirit of modernity".


title: Freddie Fox (actor)

text: In the same year was his directorial debut through the short film "Hero" (2018), which he co-wrote and co-produced, centred on an isolated young boy and a decaying old film star brought together by their shared love of the silver screen. It premiered in August at the Rhode Island International Film Festival where he won the Grand Prize (Short) for Directorial Discovery Award. It was subsequently selected at the Kerry Film Festival and the Linea d'Ombra Film Festival, and released on Amazon UK and ITunes in multiple countries in November 2019.


title: Freddie Fox (actor)

text: In 2019, he headlined the English production of "Edmond de Bergerac" playing the titular role playwright Edmond Rostand at the Birmingham Repertory Theatre before touring the UK to great acclaim. "The Guardian" raved that as Edmond, Fox is "by turns a jangle of nerves, a lead weight of despondency and a blaze of success." Fox then voiced Captain Holly in "Watership Down" and played the characters Jokannen, Dorian Gray, and Lord Goring in "The Importance of Being Oscar". He starred as Detective Sargeant Wilbur Strauss in the highly rated Victorian comedy "Year of the Rabbit", which he described as his "first real comedy show" and "a total lesson in improvised and situational comedy" that he had never had before. He also rendered dramatic performances in "The Class Ceiling" episode of "Novels That Shaped Our World". Thomas Clay's "Fanny Lye Deliver'd" then premiered to positive reviews as a new cult classic set in 1657 Shropshire where Fox played Thomas Ashbury. "The Independent" said that he "gives Thomas a flash of predatory charisma," and according to "The Irish News", "preaches 'perfect libertinism' in captivating sermons".


title: Freddie Fox (actor)

text: At the start of 2020, Fox delivered a persuasive performance in his role as the convicted mass murderer Jeremy Bamber in the ITV crime drama "White House Farm" based on the White House Farm murders in August 1985. In preparation, he created a psychology as convincing and enigmatic as the character should be "to leave the viewer asking questions". The "London Evening Standard" praised Fox's "ambiguous, wide-eyed look that hovers between angelic and devious, that it's hard to know whether to feel sympathy or suspicion." "The Times" remarked that he managed to be both "revealing and inscrutable, which can't be easy." The series won as Best New Drama at the 2020 TV Choice Awards leading to its international release on HBO Max in September 2020 and on Netflix in February 2021. Subsequently, he appeared on his co-star Cressida Bonas' podcast "Fear Itself", where he expressed his fear of not reaching his full potential.


title: Freddie Fox (actor)

text: In the same year, Fox guest-starred as the alcoholic busker Miles Stevens in "McDonald & Dodds" and as King Hugo of Sweden in Hulu's critically acclaimed comedy-drama series "The Great" (2020). He reprised his voice-over role as Dennis in the second season of "Dennis & Gnasher: Unleashed!" from which select episodes were condensed into the film "". He then portrayed Margaret Thatcher's son Mark Thatcher in season 4 of the award-winning Netflix historical drama series "The Crown" (2020).


title: Freddie Fox (actor)

text: In 2021, Fox opened The Golden Era of Broadway episode of "The Theatre Channel", singing an arrangement of "Willkommen" and "Money" from "Cabaret", and starred as Tony Kroesig, a Bullingdon club member and aristocrat banker turned politician, in "The Pursuit of Love".


title: Freddie Fox (actor)

text: Fox is a patron of the St Giles Trust and Future 5 — a campaign by Prostate Cancer Research Centre. He is also an honorary vice president of the Story of Christmas Appeal. In March 2015, he became the face of Live Below The Line. An avid runner himself, he supported the St James's Place Foundation Triathlon and Duathlon in 2016 which raised £1.3m for Hope and Homes for Children. He was involved with the charity when he visited orphanages in Rwanda in 2015 and in Uganda in 2018 which he wrote about in a two-part blog entry, "Love is Everything—Freddie Fox in Uganda". He is a frequent supporter and reader at fundraising activities and charity events of The Poetry Hour, Breast Cancer Now, the Brain Tumour Research Campaign, The Story of Christmas Appeal, and The National Brain Appeal among others. In 2020, he participated in a charity read of Tom Stoppard's "The Real Inspector Hound" produced by Lockdown Theatre in association with The Royal Theatrical Fund. In 2021, he performed with Alfie Boe on a global livestream concert, "Alfie Boe & Friends Live At The Savoy "Lockdown Edition"", which sold tickets to donate to Hospitality Action and the Connection at St. Martin's.


title: Freddie Fox (actor)

text: Fox is described by "The Guardian" as "deliciously debonair" and "at age 23, is all responsive intelligence and poised charm and is unguarded – as people happy in their own skins often are." "He is almost tyrannically polite and charming," says "The Telegraph", and, "raised in a pack of upper-class thespians, his every utterance comes as a measured, um-less paragraph." Often branded as an acting royalty, he comes from a family whose decades-long performances formed a dynasty which he now fronts as the latest scion. Amidst inevitable assumptions, he clarifies that though his parents' ties may have opened doors to agents, it is "not a masonic back door to every job".


title: Freddie Fox (actor)

text: "Another Magazine" remarked that at the age of 23, Fox "has surprisingly well-formed opinions on men's style." According to "The Gentleman's Journal", whose cover he headlined on their Autumn 2014 issue, Fox "continues to impress commentators with his suave, dandy-esque style." He was featured in "The Chap"s Summer 2018 edition in what the magazine boasts of as their best edition, saying that "no previous issue has so comprehensively gathered so many vital strands of 'anarcho-dandyism'". Fox launched the opening of "White Shirt Week" in St James's, London in 2013. His commentary on the role his costume played in "The Riot Club" was featured on "Financial Times".


title: Freddie Fox (actor)

text: Averse to social media, he said that he keeps a boundary while talking about things he is interested in to preserve his mystery as an actor "so that there's still an element of surprise about where characters come from."


title: Freddie Fox (actor)

text: Fox dated Tamzin Merchant, his co-star in "The Mystery of Edwin Drood", for two years until September 2013. In June 2020, it was reported that he was dating "Sex Education" star Tanya Reynolds, whom he met in 2016 during production of "Fanny Lye Deliver'd". While promoting "Cucumber" in 2015, Fox stated that he hopes to "fall in love with another person, as opposed to a sex" and expounded further in 2020 saying that "being able to say that you have a more rounded experience as a human being, whether it be through sexuality, or whatever, is now perceived as a real advantage".


title: Freddie Fox (actor)

text: Outside of acting, Fox enjoys "swimming, taking photographs, walking in the countryside, writing poems and screenplays", fishing and shooting, and doing charity work. He plays the guitar and used to play the cello. "The Secret History", "Brideshead Revisited", and Marcus Aurelius' "Meditations" are some of his favourite books.


title: The Late Show with Stephen Colbert

text: The Late Show with Stephen Colbert is an American late-night news and liberal political satire talk show hosted by Stephen Colbert, which premiered on September 8, 2015. Produced by Spartina Productions and CBS Studios, it is the second iteration of CBS' "Late Show" franchise. The program is taped at the Ed Sullivan Theater in New York City and airs live to tape in most U.S. markets weeknights at 11:35p.m. ET/PT, as with its competitors "Jimmy Kimmel Live!" and "The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon". It is the second most-watched late-night show in the United States, only being surpassed by Fox News' "Gutfeld!".


title: The Late Show with Stephen Colbert

text: Colbert was announced as the new host in April 2014, after existing host David Letterman announced his intention to retire earlier in the month; Colbert had previously hosted Comedy Central's news satire "The Colbert Report", a program where Colbert portrayed himself as a parody of conservative pundits. As such, the series has carried a stronger focus on discussing and satirizing current events, especially within U.S. politics. Some of Colbert's staff moved to "The Late Show", along with Jon Stewartwho previously hosted "The Colbert Report"s parent series "The Daily Show"serving as an executive producer.


title: The Late Show with Stephen Colbert

text: As of the conclusion of the 2019–2020 season, "The Late Show with Stephen Colbert" has been the top late-night program in the United States for the past four seasons. Since 2019, it exceeded "The Tonight Show" in key demographic viewership.


title: The Late Show with Stephen Colbert

text: Prior to Colbert's assumption of hosting duties, David Letterman had been host of "Late Show" for 22 years, dating to his arrival at CBS in 1993. CBS had not had a regular late-night talk show for most of its existence before that point, with only one attempt (the short-lived "Pat Sajak Show" in 1989–1990) between 1972 and Letterman's arrival. Letterman, who joined CBS from NBC after ending his eleven-year run as host of "Late Night" and losing out on being Johnny Carson's successor on "The Tonight Show" to Jay Leno, was initially competitive with his show's bitter rival, "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno"; Letterman's "Late Show", however, slowly experienced a decline in ratings over the course of the 1990s and 2000s, dating back to an affiliation agreement between New World Communications and Fox that resulted in all nine CBS-affiliated stations it owned or recently acquired switching to Fox between September and December 1994, relegating the network to lower-rated former Fox affiliates and independent stations in many major cities.


title: The Late Show with Stephen Colbert

text: According to TV by the Numbers, in February 2013, the live-plus-seven-day ratings for Letterman's "Late Show" averaged about 3.1 million per show for the 2012–2013 season to date. A year later, average viewership was down to 2.8 million. "Late Show" also had the oldest audience among the various late-night talk shows, which may have led to CBS' decision to pick a younger replacement for Letterman to compete with "The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon" and ABC's "Jimmy Kimmel Live!". In addition, Colbert's previous program did well among college students and young men 18–34, which are prime target audiences for late-night comedy programming.


title: The Late Show with Stephen Colbert

text: On April 3, 2014, Letterman announced his retirement, with his final episode as host of "Late Show" scheduled for May 20, 2015. On April 10, 2014, CBS announced Stephen Colbert as Letterman's successor, signing him to a five-year agreement. In contrast with Colbert's previous program "The Colbert Report", in which he played a fictionalized version of himself, Colbert hosts the show as himself. Colbert's version retains the "Late Show" name under license from Letterman's Worldwide Pants, which holds the registered trademark. On April 23, 2014, the character version of Stephen Colbert appeared on "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart" to announce that he had clearly "won television" and would be closing down "The Colbert Report" because he had met his goal. This came after the announcement the character would not be used after the end of "The Colbert Report". The final episode of "Report" aired on December 18, 2014.


title: The Late Show with Stephen Colbert

text: Several states and municipalities attempted to coax CBS with tax credits and other incentives to move "Late Show" from its long-time home at the Ed Sullivan Theater in New York City, including Connecticut, Los Angeles, and New Orleans. On July 23, 2014, CBS CEO Les Moonves announced that the program would remain in New York City; CBS would be eligible for $11 million in tax credits over five years to produce the program there, and would also receive grants to fund renovations to the theater. Jon Batiste was announced as the bandleader on June 4, 2015, with his Stay Human band succeeding the CBS Orchestra (which returned to its previous identity as the World's Most Dangerous Band shortly thereafter) as the house band.


title: The Late Show with Stephen Colbert

text: In anticipation of the program's premiere, a new online presence was launched for "The Late Show" in June 2015, including new social media accounts, a podcast, mobile app, and a monologue-styled video focusing on the beard Colbert had grown since leaving "The Colbert Report". Throughout the remainder of the summer, videos would continue to be released through the show's official YouTube channel and mobile app. On July 1, 2015, Colbert hosted a special edition of a public access program in Monroe, Michigan, interviewing Eminem.


title: The Late Show with Stephen Colbert

text: Colbert has been given near-full control of the show, with little interference from CBS management in regard to format. Colbert brought most of his staff from "The Colbert Report" with him to "The Late Show", as well as outsiders such as Brian Stack, who is best known for his work on Conan O'Brien's programs, and Jon Stewart, former host of Colbert's previous sister program "The Daily Show", who is credited as executive producer. Colbert no longer uses the character he had portrayed on "The Colbert Report", jokingly remarking to Jeb Bush that "I used to play a narcissistic conservative punditnow I'm just a narcissist."


title: The Late Show with Stephen Colbert

text: The Ed Sullivan Theater underwent a full restoration to its original 1927 appearance, a process that began following Letterman's final episode, including the uncovering of the theater's ceiling, stained-glass windows and a restoration of a chandelier, due to advances in technology that allow less sound and video equipment to cover up the auditorium's architectural details. The 1993 restoration project for Letterman was done on only a few months' notice after the theater was repurchased in February 1993 by CBS.


title: The Late Show with Stephen Colbert

text: On April 13, 2016, former "CBS This Morning" executive producer Chris Licht was named showrunner for "The Late Show"; CBS had shown concerns that, despite improved ratings in comparison to Letterman's tenure, Colbert had a weak online presence in comparison to "The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon", and Colbert's lead-out "The Late Late Show with James Corden" (whose "Carpool Karaoke" segments have been popular as viral videos). "The Hollywood Reporter" believed that Licht's experience in news programming would be leveraged to complement Colbert's strengths in topical and news-oriented material.


title: The Late Show with Stephen Colbert

text: On October 17, 2019, Colbert and CBS announced that they had agreed to renew his contract, which has been set to expire in August 2020, until August 2023.


title: The Late Show with Stephen Colbert

text: On March 12, 2020, the show suspended production due to the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States. Beginning March 30, 2020, the show was produced from Colbert's home, billed as "A Late Show with Stephen Colbert" (or "A Late Show with Stephen at Home"). ViacomCBS announced that the show would return to the Ed Sullivan Theater on August 6 with in-studio episodes starting on August 10, 2020. Colbert presented the program from a smaller set within the building's office tower, built as a replica of his own personal office seen on "A Late Show with Stephen Colbert".


title: The Late Show with Stephen Colbert

text: On August 4, 2020, the show's music producer Giovanni Cianci was fired following sexual misconduct allegations.


title: The Late Show with Stephen Colbert

text: On May 24, 2021, Colbert announced that the show would resume production inside the theater with an audience fully vaccinated against COVID-19 starting on June 14, 2021. It was also announced that the Ed Sullivan Theater would be back at full capacity, following the lifting of COVID-19 guidelines that restricted the number of people in a crowded, indoor setting. The announcement was significant in that the Ed Sullivan Theater would become the first theater on Broadway to reopen to full capacity. It also made "The Late Show" the first late-night talk show to announce a return to a full audience, though "The Tonight Show" ultimately returned to full-capacity audiences one week ahead of "The Late Show" on June 7, 2021. With the show's return to the theater, the original name was also put back in use.


title: The Late Show with Stephen Colbert

text: The program's intro originally used tilt–shift photography featuring scenes of New York City, making the city appear like a miniature model. In September 2021 "The Late Show" introduced a new intro sequence, featuring the use of a drone camera flying around the theater and its backstage areas.


title: The Late Show with Stephen Colbert

text: On February 26, 2022, Chris Licht, the showrunner, left the show to become the new chairman and CEO of CNN.


title: The Late Show with Stephen Colbert

text: Colbert originally started the show with a cold open and brief monologue before the opening sequence. Starting with the April 18, 2016, broadcast, the first under new showrunner Chris Licht, the format was modified to replace the cold open monologue with short sketches starring Colbert, his staff, and often featuring that night's guests, followed by the opening sequence and Colbert entering the stage. For the first few weeks of the show, Colbert performed his own voiceovers for the intro. The intro is now voiced over by Jen Spyra.


title: The Late Show with Stephen Colbert

text: The open is followed by an extended news satire style desk sequence with a run-through of recent headlines, in a manner reminiscent of television newscasts and that of "The Colbert Report". Also, the show follows the same basic format as other late-night talk shows including the use of sketch comedy, guest interviews and musical performances. Colbert's guest list includes more political and government figures than his contemporaries; his first two weeks' guests included visits from Jeb Bush, Joe Biden, Ban Ki-moon, Stephen Breyer, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Donald Trump, and Ted Cruz.


title: The Late Show with Stephen Colbert

text: Thus far, Colbert has not had any of his staff act as a sidekick or straight man on the show. While Colbert dances and physically interacts with Jon Batiste while the band plays, they only occasionally engage in on-air banter, unlike David Letterman's relationship with Paul Shaffer or the relationship of other late night hosts with their announcers or bandleaders. On the August 11, 2022, episode, Colbert announced that Batiste had decided he would not be returning to the show, in order to "pursue personal and professional interests". After the first few episodes in which Colbert introduced himself, he has used an off-screen announcerwriter Jen Spyra. Occasionally, Colbert has brought out producers of his show, or enlisted the help of audience members, who assume a sidekick-like role for single segments, engaging in light dialogue about a topic.


title: The Late Show with Stephen Colbert

text: The show has occasionally been broadcast live to provide coverage of the immediate aftermath of major political events, such as candidate debates and party conventions during election years, the State of the Union address, in the 2018 mid-term elections and the 2020 US presidential election.


title: The Late Show with Stephen Colbert

text: In the show's series premiere, Colbert welcomed actor George Clooney and politician Jeb Bush, thanked former host David Letterman, and joined singer Mavis Staples and numerous other musicians for a rendition of Sly and the Family Stone's "Everyday People". The episode nearly missed its broadcast due to technical difficulties. An early interview with Vice President Joe Biden received particular acclaim.


title: The Late Show with Stephen Colbert

text: Following the terrorist attacks in Paris that November, Colbert devoted his program to that city. A special football-themed episode aired as the lead-out program for Super Bowl 50 in 2016, featuring guests President Barack Obama (in a taped segment), Tina Fey, Margot Robbie, Will Ferrell, and Megyn Kelly.


title: The Late Show with Stephen Colbert

text: On June 22, 2016, CBS announced that "The Late Show" would broadcast two weeks of live episodes during the 2016 Republican and Democratic conventions. The first of these episodes, on July 18, 2016, opened with a musical number by Colbert that compared the Republican convention to being "Christmas in July", and featured sketches where Jon Stewart (revealed to have been living off-grid in a cabin) is told that Donald Trump had clinched the Republican nomination for the presidential election, Colbert's persona from "The Colbert Report" is revived and delivers an edition of The Word on "Trumpiness", and a filmed sketch touring the convention's venue as his "The Hunger Games"-inspired character Julius Flickerman. Stewart appeared once more the following Thursday, delivering a segment criticizing the Fox News Channel in the wake of the firing of its CEO Roger Ailes. Colbert's performances during these episodes were critically praised for their return to an emphasis on news-oriented comedy similar to "The Colbert Report" and "The Daily Show".


title: The Late Show with Stephen Colbert

text: On November 8, 2016, Colbert presented a live, election night special for CBS's sister premium channel Showtime, "Stephen Colbert's Live Election Night: Democracy's Series Finale: Who's Going to Clean Up This Shit?" The special featured appearances by Laura Benanti (reprising her impersonation of Melania Trump), Jeff Goldblum, Mark Halperin, Elle King, John Heilemann, and Nick Offerman. Due to it being broadcast on a premium channel, the show was billed as being uncensored (which Colbert demonstrated during his monologue by swearing, and announcing Marco Rubio's Senate re-election result using a nearly-nude model). Critics felt that the special had anticipated a Hillary Clinton victory, noting the increasingly "surreal" and "uncomfortable" atmosphere that ensued when Trump emerged as the front-runner. When Halperin informed Colbert that Trump was nearing the required 270 electoral votes, he remarked that he "[couldn't] put a happy face on it, and that's my job." Katy Perry was expected to make a pre-recorded appearance, but her segment was dropped due to the impending victory. During his interview, Jeff Goldblum also acknowledged the situation, and sang a verse from "It Goes Like It Goes". In his closing monologue, Colbert noted that before she died, his mother Lorna (who was born only days after the first presidential election where women had the right to vote nationally) remarked thatdespite having historically been a Republicanshe had wanted to vote for Hillary Clinton. He argued that people may have "overdosed" on the "poison" of politics, but acknowledged that "you can't laugh and be afraid at the same time, and the devil cannot stand mockery." Another abandoned gag from the special was, had Clinton won, Colbert would have brought out nude models with the letters "W-E-'-R-E W-I-T-H H-E-R" printed on their butt cheeks. When it became clear that Trump was going to win, they initially thought of changing the lettering to "W-E-'-R-E S-C-R-E-W-E-D", before it was decided not to use the gag.


title: The Late Show with Stephen Colbert

text: On May 1, 2017, Colbert's monologue was devoted to President Trump following his conduct in an interview with CBS's John Dickerson on "Face the Nation". Describing Dickerson as a fellow "member of the CBS family", Colbert "read a laundry list of insults on-air to rapturous cheers from the crowd... reeling off a series of scripted jokes and ending on, 'In fact, the only thing your mouth is good for is being Vladimir Putin's cock holster.'" Colbert's language was considered to be crude and homophobic by some, and led to a short-lived #FireColbert hashtag on Twitter. Colbert later addressed the controversy on-air, admitting he had used "a few words that were cruder than they needed to be" but that he "would do [the monologue] again". On May 5, the Federal Communications Commission announced that it would go through a comprehensive investigation of Colbert's remarks, and concluded no action was to be taken against Colbert or "The Late Show", reasoning in a public statement released on May 23 that there was "nothing actionable under the FCC's rules" as the offending statement had been properly censored.


title: The Late Show with Stephen Colbert

text: On November 3, 2020, Colbert produced his second Showtime election special, "Stephen Colbert's Election Night 2020: Democracy's Last Stand: Building Back America Great Again Better 2020". Ahead of the special, showrunner Chris Licht told "The Hollywood Reporter"s "TV's Top 5" podcast that the show would be prepared for every eventuality. The special featured many of the same guests who had attended the 2016 election night special, notably Charlemagne tha God; unlike the 2016 show, the prolonged nature of the election projections in 2020 meant that Colbert could not reasonably prognosticate on a winner during the live showAmericans would not know the winner until later in the week. The special won the 2021 Emmy Award for Outstanding Variety Special (Live).


title: The Late Show with Stephen Colbert

text: "The Late Show" debuted to 8.26 million viewers (with Live+7) according to Nielsen Media Research, beating out all late-night competition. The show's highest ratings to dateand highest for the "Late Show" franchisewere achieved by a live episode that ran after Super Bowl 50 in 2016, which averaged 21.1 million viewers. Despite this, the show's initial ratings trailed competitor "The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon", while remaining ahead of "Jimmy Kimmel Live". While Colbert still managed more young viewers than Letterman in his first few months, analyst Bill Carter wrote that his "opening splash seemed to dry faster than expected." He suggested this was due to little social media presence (where his competitor, Fallon, surged). After Chris Licht was brought on as showrunner, the show began to increasingly focus more extensively on politics and the 2016 U.S. presidential election, including several live episodes following the 2016 Republican National Convention. While the live episodes saw gains, "The Tonight Show" remained the top late-night program.


title: The Late Show with Stephen Colbert

text: Following the inauguration of Donald Trump as president in January 2017, "The Late Show" began to see major ratings gains, aided by the program's satire of the Trump administration. In the first full week after the inauguration, Colbert narrowly beat Fallon for the first time in average viewership since its premiere. By the end of April, "The Late Show" had been the top U.S. late-night program in terms of total viewership for sixteen consecutive weeks and was rated the number one late night show by viewership for the first quarter of 2017. "The Late Show" became the highest-rated late-night talk show for the September 2016 to May 2017 season, averaging more than 3.2 million nightly viewers.


title: The Late Show with Stephen Colbert

text: The show has since seen larger ratings gains; in the first quarter of 2018, the show saw 4.02 million DVR-adjusted viewers, which was a twenty percent leap over the same time frame a year before. In the 2018–2019 television season, "The Late Show" was the highest-rated U.S. late-night talk show for a third consecutive season. In addition, for the first time in Colbert's tenure, and the first time in franchise history since the 1994–1995 season, "The Late Show" narrowly beat "The Tonight Show" as the top late-night show among viewers in the key demographic of adults 18–49. "The Late Show" was the most-watched late-night program during the 2019–2020 season, according to the Nielsen ratings, with an average of 3.6 million viewers.


title: The Late Show with Stephen Colbert

text: "The Late Show with Stephen Colbert" has garnered mostly positive reviews. "The Guardian" Brian Moylan praised the show's humor: "This opener was by no means a perfect show, but there were enough really inventive jokes to make Colbert already seem like an innovator." Robert Lloyd of "Los Angeles Times" deemed it a "strong start", while "Variety" Brian Lowry felt it a "mostly terrific" debut, commenting, "Colbert looks like he has the skill set to settle in and make this job his own, night in and night out." Many critics considered the show's more political segments as reminiscent of "The Colbert Report". An early interview with then Vice President Joe Biden also received praise: Robert Rorke of the "New York Post" commented that the review gave Biden "that essential sense of humanity that makes people believe in a candidate".


title: The Late Show with Stephen Colbert

text: The show's post-Super Bowl episode in 2016 proved polarizing. "Sunday's live episode felt mostly like a wasted opportunityone that probably won't win many converts among those football fans sober enough to stick around," said Brian Lowry at "Variety". Daniel D'Addario of "Time" dubbed his performance "stiff and uncomfortable", writing, "Colbert might have been better advised not to bother trying with football at all and just put forward a program of pure entertainment."


title: The Late Show with Stephen Colbert

text: "The Late Show" has received positive reviews following the inauguration of Donald Trump as president. "Colbert may not be the sarcastic, irony-laden character he once played for Comedy Central, but as Trump has dominated the news every day since taking office, "The Late Show" has become the home for reasoned, but incisive, discussion, on the perceived overreaches of the White House," said David Sims of "The Atlantic". James Poniewozik of "The New York Times" commented, "Mr. Colbert's comedy hasn't become radically different, but it has been more frank and caustic... The network-TV Mr. Colbert is more cheery than his cable character. But it's as if the Trump administration had solved the problem of reconciling his new comedy with his old by making truthiness America's official language."


title: The Late Show with Stephen Colbert

text: The show was a recipient for the Peabody Award and earned Primetime Emmy Award nominations including four times for Outstanding Variety Talk Series.


title: The Late Show with Stephen Colbert

text: In Canada, "The Late Show with Stephen Colbert" airs on Global, airing in simulcast with CBS in most regions. NTV, another Canadian station, also simulcasts Global's broadcast to Newfoundland as well as The Bahamas and Saint Pierre and Miquelon.


title: The Late Show with Stephen Colbert

text: In Southeast Asia, "The Late Show with Stephen Colbert" airs on RTL CBS Entertainment weeknights at 10:50pm () starting September 10, 2015, preceding "The Late Late Show with James Corden".


title: The Late Show with Stephen Colbert

text: In South Africa the show airs at 11:00pm Monday–Thursday, and Friday nights at midnight, on free-to-air e.tv, since October 2019.


title: The Late Show with Stephen Colbert

text: The American Forces Network satellite radio and television service broadcasts the show commercial free to United States military personnel stationed overseas on Prime Atlantic for viewers in Europe and on Prime Pacific for viewers in Asia.


title: Imtiaz Ali (director)

text: Imtiaz Ali (born 16 June 1971) is an Indian film director, producer, actor and writer who works in Hindi cinema.


title: Imtiaz Ali (director)

text: Imtiaz Ali was born in Jamshedpur and spent some of his early years in Patna. Imtiaz belongs to the Muslim family of Jamshedpur in Bihar (now Jharkhand).


title: Imtiaz Ali (director)

text: His father Mansoor Ali was a contractor who did irrigation job, and as a child he would sometimes accompany him, which gave Imtiaz a sense of what was going on in the innards of India. His uncle, through his mother, is Pakistani TV actor and director/producer Khalid Ahmed. He had his early education in St. Michael's High School,Patna and later in D.B.M.S. English School, Jamshedpur, He is the brother of director Arif Ali (who made his directional debut with the film "Lekar Hum Deewana Dil").


title: Imtiaz Ali (director)

text: He attended Hindu College, University of Delhi, where he took part in college theater. He was very successful in college. He also started Ibtida, the dramatics society of the college. Thereafter he moved to Mumbai and did a diploma course from Xavier Institute of Communication.


title: Imtiaz Ali (director)

text: Imtiaz began his career directing TV programs including "Kurukshetra" for Zee TV and Imtihaan for Doordarshan. He moved on to Bollywood films. In 2005, he made his directorial debut with "Socha Na Tha" starring Abhay Deol and Ayesha Takia. He quoted, later in a talk, that it took him three years to make the film.


title: Imtiaz Ali (director)

text: His second film, "Jab We Met", starred then real-life couple Kareena Kapoor and Shahid Kapoor, and became a box office success. His next film, "Love Aaj Kal" starred Saif Ali Khan and Deepika Padukone, and emerged as his biggest commercial success to date. Ali's next film "Rockstar", starring Ranbir Kapoor, did well at the box office despite mixed reviews with praise for Kapoor's performance and A.R. Rahman's music which has now achieved cult status.


title: Imtiaz Ali (director)

text: Ali founded his film production company, Window Seat Films; whose first release was "Highway". Starring Randeep Hooda and Alia Bhatt, the film was well appreciated by critics and is credited as one of his best films. His next production film, "Tamasha", starred Ranbir Kapoor and Deepika Padukone in the lead roles and was released to mixed reviews on 27 November 2015, although it has went on to achieve cult status for its subject inspiring many youngsters later on and has been recognised as one of Ali's best films. The movie was a moderate success and opened to good reviews from cities.


title: Imtiaz Ali (director)

text: His next directorial venture "Jab Harry Met Sejal", starring Shah Rukh Khan and Anushka Sharma in lead roles, was released in August 2017. The film released to negative reviews in India, even though it did well overseas. His next release after 3 years, "Love Aaj Kal", starring Kartik Aaryan and Sara Ali Khan, released on 14 February 2020, and opened to negative reviews.


title: Imtiaz Ali (director)

text: The Filmfare Awards are presented annually by The Times Group to honour both artistic and technical excellence of professionals in the Hindi cinema.


title: Imtiaz Ali (director)

text: The International Indian Film Academy Awards (shortened as IIFA) is an annual international event organised by the Wizcraft International Entertainment Pvt. Ltd. to honour excellence in the Hindi cinema.


title: Imtiaz Ali (director)

text: The Producers Guild Film Awards (previously known as the Apsara Film & Television Producers Guild Awards) is an annual event organised by the Film Producers Guild of India.


title: Imtiaz Ali (director)

text: The Screen Awards are presented annually by Indian Express Limited to honour excellence in Hindi cinema.


title: First Nagorno-Karabakh War

text: The First Nagorno-Karabakh War was an ethnic and territorial conflict that took place from February 1988 to May 1994, in the enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh in southwestern Azerbaijan, between the majority ethnic Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh backed by Armenia, and the Republic of Azerbaijan. As the war progressed, Armenia and Azerbaijan, both former Soviet Republics, entangled themselves in protracted, undeclared mountain warfare in the mountainous heights of Karabakh as Azerbaijan attempted to curb the secessionist movement in Nagorno-Karabakh. The enclave's parliament had voted in favor of uniting with Armenia and a referendum, boycotted by the Azerbaijani population of Nagorno-Karabakh, was held, in which a majority voted in favor of independence. The demand to unify with Armenia began in a relatively peaceful manner in 1988; in the following months, as the Soviet Union disintegrated, it gradually grew into an increasingly violent conflict between Armenians and Azerbaijanis, resulting in ethnic cleansing, including the Sumgait (1988) and Baku (1990) pogroms directed against Armenians, and the Gugark pogrom (1988) and Khojaly Massacre (1992) directed against Azerbaijanis.


title: First Nagorno-Karabakh War

text: Inter-ethnic clashes between the two broke out shortly after the parliament of the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast (NKAO) in Azerbaijan voted to unite the region with Armenia on 20 February 1988. The declaration of secession from Azerbaijan was the culmination of a territorial conflict. As Azerbaijan declared its independence from the Soviet Union and removed the powers held by the enclave's government, the Armenian majority voted to secede from Azerbaijan and in the process proclaimed the unrecognized Republic of Nagorno-Karabakh.


title: First Nagorno-Karabakh War

text: Full-scale fighting erupted in early 1992. International mediation by several groups including the Conference for Security and Co-operation in Europe (CSCE) failed to bring an end resolution that both sides could work with. In early 1993, Armenian forces captured seven Azerbaijani-majority districts outside the enclave itself, threatening the involvement of other countries in the region. By the end of the war in 1994, the Armenians were in full control of the enclave, in addition to surrounding Azerbaijani territories, most notably the Lachin Corridor – a mountain pass that links Nagorno-Karabakh with mainland Armenia. A Russian-brokered ceasefire was signed in May 1994.


title: First Nagorno-Karabakh War

text: As a result of the conflict, approximately 724,000 Azerbaijanis were expelled from Armenia, Nagorno-Karabakh and the surrounding territories, while 300,000–500,000 Armenians living in Azerbaijan or Armenian border areas were displaced. After the end of the war and over a period of many years, regular peace talks between Armenia and Azerbaijan were mediated by the OSCE Minsk Group but failed to result in a peace treaty. This left the Nagorno-Karabakh area in a state of legal limbo, with the Republic of Artsakh remaining "de facto" independent but internationally unrecognized. Ongoing tensions persisted, with occasional outbreaks of armed clashes. Armenian forces occupied approximately 9% of Azerbaijan's territory outside the enclave until the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War in 2020.


title: First Nagorno-Karabakh War

text: The territorial ownership of Nagorno-Karabakh today is heavily contested between Armenians and Azerbaijanis. The current conflict has its roots in events following World War I. Amid the dissolution of the Russian Empire in November 1917 and seizure of power by the Bolsheviks, the three main ethnic groups of the South Caucasus, Armenians, Azerbaijanis and Georgians, struggled to come to an agreement on the nature of political government in the region. An attempt at shared political authority in the form of the Transcaucasian Federation in the spring of 1918 came to naught in the face of an invasion by the forces of the Ottoman Empire. In May 1918, separate Armenian, Azerbaijani and Georgian national republics declared their formal independence from Russia.


title: First Nagorno-Karabakh War

text: Fighting soon broke out between the First Republic of Armenia and the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic in three regions in particular: Nakhchivan, Zangezur (today the Armenian provinces of Syunik and Vayotz Dzor) and Karabakh itself.


title: First Nagorno-Karabakh War

text: Armenia and Azerbaijan quarreled over the prospective boundaries of the three regions. The Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh sought to unite the region with the Armenian republic. Following the defeat of the Ottoman Empire in World War I, forces led by Armenian general Andranik Ozanian entered Karabakh and made for the regional capital of Shusha in December 1918 when they were stopped by newly-arrived British troops. The British commander suggested Andranik desist from marching on to Shusha and allow Armenia's and Azerbaijan's territorial disputes be left to the diplomats meeting at the forthcoming Paris Peace Conference. The British in the meantime decided to appoint Khosrov bey Sultanov, an Azerbaijani statesman, as provisional governor, but insisted that all sides await the decision made at the peace conference. Intermittent fighting broke out shortly after and accelerated following the British pull-out in early 1919. The violence culminated in Shusha's partial destruction by Azerbaijani forces in April 1920.


title: First Nagorno-Karabakh War

text: In April 1920, the Soviet Eleventh Army invaded the Caucasus and within two years, the Caucasian republics were formed into the Transcaucasian SFSR of the Soviet Union. The Bolsheviks created a seven-member committee, the Caucasus Bureau (known as the Kavburo). Established under the auspices of the People's Commissariat for Nationalities, the Kavburo was tasked with resolving a myriad of national-related issues in the Caucasus. On 4 July 1921 the committee voted 4–3 in favor of assigning Nagorno-Karabakh to the newly created Soviet Socialist Republic of Armenia, but a day later the Kavburo reversed its decision and voted to leave the region within the Azerbaijan SSR.


title: First Nagorno-Karabakh War

text: Historians to this day debate the reason for the Kavburo's last-minute reversal. Early scholarship argued that the decision was driven by a Soviet nationality policy that sought to create divisions within different ethnic and national groups. In addition to Nagorno-Karabakh, the Soviets also turned Nakhichevan, a region with a large Armenian minority population, into an exclave of Azerbaijan, separated by Armenia's border. More recent research has pointed to geography, Soviet economic policy, and ensuring close relations with Turkish nationalist leader Mustafa Kemal as factoring heavily in the Soviet decision-making.


title: First Nagorno-Karabakh War

text: The creation of the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast (NKAO) in 1923 left the region with a 94% Armenian population. The region's capital was moved from Shusha to Khankendi, which was subsequently renamed Stepanakert.


title: First Nagorno-Karabakh War

text: Over the following decades of Soviet rule, the Nagorno-Karabakh Armenians retained a strong desire to reunite with Armenia. A number of Armenian Communist Party officials attempted to persuade Moscow to reconsider the question, to little avail. In 1936, First Secretary of the Communist Party of Armenia Aghasi Khanjian was murdered by the deputy head (and soon head) of the NKVD Lavrentiy Beria after submitting Armenian grievances to Stalin, which included requests to return Nagorno-Karabakh and Nakhichevan to Armenia. The Armenians of the region frequently complained over the span of Soviet rule that their cultural and national rights were continually trampled upon by the Soviet Azerbaijani authorities in Baku.


title: First Nagorno-Karabakh War

text: After Stalin's death, Armenian discontent began to be voiced. In 1963, around 2,500 Karabakh Armenians signed a petition calling for Karabakh to be put under Armenian control or to be transferred to Russia. The same year saw violent clashes in Stepanakert, leading to the death of 18 Armenians. In 1965 and 1977, there were large demonstrations in Yerevan calling to unify Karabakh with Armenia.


title: First Nagorno-Karabakh War

text: In 1985, Mikhail Gorbachev came to power as the new general secretary of the Soviet Union and began implementing plans to reform the Soviet Union through his policies of "perestroika" and "glasnost". Many Armenians took advantage of the unprecedented opening of political expression offered by his policies and brought the issue of Nagorno-Karabakh back into the limelight. Karabakh Armenian leaders complained that the region had neither Armenian language textbooks in schools nor in television broadcasting, and that Azerbaijan's Communist Party General Secretary Heydar Aliyev had attempted to "Azerify" the region by increasing the influence and number of Azerbaijanis living in Nagorno-Karabakh while at the same time pressuring its Armenian population to emigrate (Aliyev himself moved to Moscow in 1982, when was promoted to the position of the first deputy prime minister of the USSR) Over the course of seventy years, the Armenian population of Karabakh had dwindled to nearly three-quarters of the total population by the late 1980s.


title: First Nagorno-Karabakh War

text: In February 1988, Armenians began protesting and staging workers' strikes in Yerevan, demanding unification with the enclave. On 20 February 1988, the leaders of the regional Soviet of Karabakh voted in favour of unifying the autonomous region with Armenia in a resolution.


title: First Nagorno-Karabakh War

text: In early 1991, President Gorbachev held a special countrywide referendum called the Union Treaty which would decide if the Soviet republics would remain together. Newly elected non-communist leaders had come to power in the Soviet republics, including Boris Yeltsin in Russia (Gorbachev remained the President of the Soviet Union), Levon Ter-Petrosyan in Armenia, and Ayaz Mutalibov in Azerbaijan. Armenia and five other republics boycotted the referendum (Armenia declared its independence from the Soviet Union on 23 August 1990, whereas Azerbaijan voted in favor of joining).


title: First Nagorno-Karabakh War

text: As many Armenians and Azerbaijanis in Karabakh began acquiring arms located in caches throughout Karabakh, Mutalibov turned to Gorbachev for support in launching a joint military operation in order to disarm Armenian militants in the region. Codenamed Operation Ring, Soviet forces, acting in conjunction with the local Azerbaijani OMON, entered villages in the Shahumyan region and began to forcibly expel their Armenian inhabitants. The operation involved the use of ground troops, armored vehicles and artillery. The deportations of the Armenian civilians was accompanied by allegations of gross human rights violations.


title: First Nagorno-Karabakh War

text: Operation Ring was viewed by many Soviet and Armenian government officials as a heavy-handed attempt by Moscow to intimidate the Armenian populace and forced them to give up their demands for unification. In the end, the operation proved counter-productive, with the violence only reinforcing the belief among Armenians that armed resistance remained the only solution to the conflict. The initial Armenian resistance inspired volunteers to start forming irregular volunteer detachments.


title: First Nagorno-Karabakh War

text: In September 1991, Russian president Boris Yeltsin and Kazakhstan President Nursultan Nazarbayev tried their first hand at mediation efforts. After peace talks in Baku, Ganja, Stepanakert, and Yerevan on 20–23 September, the sides agreed to sign the Zheleznovodsk Communiqué in the Russian city of Zheleznovodsk taking the principles of territorial integrity, non-interference in internal affairs of sovereign states, observance of civil rights as a base of the agreement. The agreement was signed by Yeltsin, Nazarbayev, Mutalibov and Ter-Petrosyan. The peace talks came to an end, however, due to continuing bombardment and atrocities by Azerbaijani OMON in Stepanakert and Chapar in late September. with the final blow brought about by the shooting down of an Mi-8 helicopter near the village of Karakend in the Martuni District. The helicopter contained a peace mediating team made up of Russian and Kazakh observers and Azerbaijani high-ranking officials.


title: First Nagorno-Karabakh War

text: In late 1991, Armenian militia groups launched a number of operations to capture Armenian-populated villages seized by Azerbaijani OMON in May–July 1991. A number of Azerbaijani units burned these villages down as they withdrew from their positions. According to the Moscow-based Human Rights organization Memorial, at the same time, as a result of attacks by Armenian armed forces, several thousand residents of Azerbaijani villages in the former Shahumian, Hadrut, Martakert, Askeran and Martuni rayons of Azerbaijan left their homes. Some villages (e.g., Imereti and Gerevent) were burned by the militants. There were instances of violence against the civilian population (in particular, in the village Meshali).


title: First Nagorno-Karabakh War

text: Starting in late 1991, when the Azerbaijani side started its counter-offensive, the Armenian side began targeting Azerbaijani villages. According to Memorial, the villages Malibeyli and Gushchular, from which Azerbaijani forces regularly bombarded Stepanakert, were attacked by Armenians. Houses were burned and dozens of civilians were killed. Each side accused the other of using the villages for military purposes. On 19 December, interior ministry troops began to withdraw from Nagorno-Karabakh, completing their departure on 27 December. With the collapse of the Soviet Union and the withdrawal of interior ministry troops from Nagorno-Karabakh, the situation in the region spiraled out of control.


title: First Nagorno-Karabakh War

text: As the dissolution of the Soviet Union accelerated in late 1991, both sides sought to acquire weaponry from military caches located throughout the region. The initial advantage tilted in Azerbaijan's favour. During the Cold War, Soviet military doctrine for the defense of the Caucasus had outlined a strategy where Armenia would become a combat zone in the event that NATO member Turkey invaded from the west. Thus, there were only three military divisions stationed in the Armenian SSR, and the country had no airfields, while Azerbaijan had a total of five divisions and five military air bases. Furthermore, Armenia had approximately 500 railroad cars of ammunition compared to Azerbaijan's 10,000.


title: First Nagorno-Karabakh War

text: As MVD forces began pulling out, they bequeathed the Armenians and Azerbaijanis a vast arsenal of ammunition and armored vehicles. The government forces initially sent by Gorbachev three years earlier were from other Soviet republics and many had no wish to stay too long. Most were poor, young conscripts and many simply sold their weapons for cash or even vodka to either side, some even trying to sell tanks and armored personnel carriers (APCs). The unsecured weapons caches led both sides to accuse Gorbachev of allowing the region to slip into conflict. The Azerbaijanis purchased a large quantity of vehicles, with the Foreign Ministry of Azerbaijan reporting in November 1993 the acquisition of 286 tanks, 842 armored vehicles and 386 artillery pieces during the power vacuum. The emergence of black markets helped facilitate the import of Western-made weaponry.


title: First Nagorno-Karabakh War

text: Most weaponry was of either Russian or former Eastern bloc manufacture; although, some improvisation was also made by both sides. Azerbaijan received substantial military aid and provisions from Turkey, Israel and numerous Middle East countries. The Armenian Diaspora donated a significant amount of aid to Armenia through the course of the war and even managed to push for legislation in the United States Congress to ban American military aid to Azerbaijan in 1992. While Azerbaijan charged the Russians with helping the Armenians, a reporter from "Time" magazine confirmed that "the Azerbaijani fighters in the region [were] far better equipped with Soviet military weaponry than their opponents."


title: First Nagorno-Karabakh War

text: Following Gorbachev's resignation as president of the USSR on 25 December 1991, the remaining republics, including Kazakhstan, Belarus and Russia itself, declared their independence and the Soviet Union ceased to exist on 31 December 1991. This dissolution removed any barriers that were keeping Armenia and Azerbaijan from waging a full-scale war. One month prior, on 26 November, the Azerbaijani Parliament had rescinded Karabakh's status as an autonomous region and renamed Stepanakert "Xankandi." In response, on 10 December, a referendum was held in Karabakh by parliamentary leaders (the local Azerbaijani community boycotted the referendum), with the Armenians voting overwhelmingly in favour of independence. On 6 January 1992, the region declared its independence from Azerbaijan.


title: First Nagorno-Karabakh War

text: The withdrawal of Soviet interior troops from Nagorno-Karabakh did not necessarily lead to the complete drawdown of former Soviet military power. In February 1992, the former Soviet republics came to form the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). While Azerbaijan abstained from joining, Armenia, fearing a possible invasion by Turkey, did, bringing the country under the organization's "collective security umbrella". In January 1992, CIS forces established their new headquarters at Stepanakert and took up an active role in peacekeeping. The CIS incorporated older Soviet formations, including the 366th Motorized Rifle Regiment and elements of the Soviet Fourth Army.


title: First Nagorno-Karabakh War

text: Sporadic battles between Armenians and Azerbaijanis intensified after Operation Ring. Thousands of volunteers joined the new armies Armenia and Azerbaijan were trying to build from the ground up. In addition to the formation of regular army units, in Armenia many men volunteered to join detachments ("jokats"), units of about forty men, which, combined with several others, were placed under the command of a lieutenant colonel. Many saw themselves in the mold of historic Armenian military figures, such as Andranik Ozanian and Garegin Nzhdeh, who had fought against the Ottoman Empire and Azerbaijan Democratic Republic during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. According to a biographer of one of the men who served in these units, the detachments at first lacked organization and often chose to attack or defend certain targets and areas without central coordination. Insubordination was common, as many men simply chose not to show up, looted the belongings of dead soldiers and sold supplies, such as diesel oil intended for armoured vehicles, on the black market.


title: First Nagorno-Karabakh War

text: Many women also enlisted in the Nagorno-Karabakh military, taking part in the fighting as well as serving in auxiliary roles such as providing first-aid and evacuating wounded men from the battlefield.


title: First Nagorno-Karabakh War

text: Azerbaijan's military functioned in much the same manner: it was better organized during the first years of the war. The Azerbaijan government carried out conscription and many Azerbaijanis enthusiastically enlisted for combat in the first months after the Soviet Union collapsed. Azerbaijan's national army consisted of roughly 30,000 men, as well as nearly 10,000 in its OMON paramilitary force and several thousand volunteers from the Popular Front. Suret Huseynov, a wealthy Azerbaijani, also improvised by creating his own military brigade, the 709th, and purchased many weapons and vehicles from the 23rd Motor Rifle Division's arsenal. Isgandar Hamidov's Grey Wolves ("bozqurt") Brigade was another privately-funded military outfit. The Azerbaijan government, flush with money from oil revenues, also hired foreign mercenaries.


title: First Nagorno-Karabakh War

text: Former troops of the Soviet Union similarly offered their services to either side. One of the most prominent officers to serve on the Armenian side, for example, was former Soviet general Anatoly Zinevich, who remained in Nagorno-Karabakh for five years (1992–1997) and was involved in the planning and implementation of many operations of the Armenian forces. By the end of the war, he held the position of Chief of Staff of the Republic of Artsakh armed forces. The Azerbaijani military, on the other hand, was assisted by Afghan commander Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. The recruitment for the purpose was mostly made in Peshawar by commander Fazle Haq Mujahid and several groups were dispatched to Azerbaijan for different duties. According to Washington post, who refers to unidentified diplomats, the Afghans started arriving in August 1993 after Azerbaijani Deputy Interior Minister Roshan Jivadov had visited Afghanistan and the deployment was approved by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar.


title: First Nagorno-Karabakh War

text: Because at the time Armenia did not have the kind of far-reaching treaties with Russia (signed later in 1997 and 2010), and because the CSTO did not yet exist, it had to allocate its own resources for the defense of its western border with Turkey. For the duration of the war, most of the military personnel and equipment of the Republic of Armenia stayed in the country proper.


title: First Nagorno-Karabakh War

text: In an overall military comparison, the number of men eligible for military service in Armenia, in the age group of 17–32, totalled 550,000, while in Azerbaijan it was 1.3 million. Most men from both sides had served in the Soviet army and so had some form of military experience prior to the conflict, including men who had served their tours of duty in Afghanistan. Among Karabakh Armenians, about 60% had served in the Soviet amy Most Azerbaijanis were often subject to discrimination during their service in the Soviet military and relegated to work in construction battalions rather than fighting corps. Despite the presence of two military academies, including a naval school in Azerbaijan, the lack of such military experience was one factor that left Azerbaijan unprepared for the war.


title: First Nagorno-Karabakh War

text: During the winter of 1991–1992 Stepanakert, the capital of Nagorno-Karabakh was blockaded by Azerbaijani forces and many civilian targets in the city were intentionally bombarded by artillery and aircraft. The bombardment of Stepanakert and adjacent Armenian-held towns and villages during the blockade caused widespread destruction and the Interior Minister of Nagorno-Karabakh claimed that 169 Armenians died between October 1991 and April 1992. Azerbaijan used weapons such as the BM-21 Grad multiple-launch rocket system during the bombardment. The indiscriminate shelling and aerial attacks, terrorized the civilian population and destroyed numerous civilian buildings, including homes, hospitals and other non-legitimate military targets.


title: First Nagorno-Karabakh War

text: Human Rights Watch reported that main bases used by Azerbaijani armed forces for the bombardment of Stepanakert were the towns of Khojaly and Shusha. In February 1992, Khojaly was captured by a mixed force of ethnic Armenians and, according to international observers, the 366th CIS Regiment. After its capture, Khojaly became the site of the largest massacre to occur during the First Nagorno-Karabakh War. Human Rights Watch estimates that at least 161 Azerbaijani civilians, as well as a number of unarmed hors de combat, were killed as they fled the town. The siege was finally lifted a few months later, in May 1992, when Armenian forces scored a decisive victory by capturing Shusha.


title: First Nagorno-Karabakh War

text: On 2 January 1992 Ayaz Mutalibov assumed the presidency of Azerbaijan. Officially, the newly created Republic of Armenia publicly denied any involvement in providing any weapons, fuel, food, or other logistics to the secessionists in Nagorno-Karabakh. Ter-Petrosyan later did admit to supplying them with logistical supplies and paying the salaries of the separatists, but denied sending any of its own men into combat. Armenia faced a debilitating blockade by the now Republic of Azerbaijan, as well as pressure from neighbouring Turkey, which decided to side with Azerbaijan and build a closer relationship with it. In early February, the Azerbaijani villages of Malıbəyli, Karadagly and Agdaban were conquered and their population evicted, leading to at least 99 civilian deaths and 140 wounded.


title: First Nagorno-Karabakh War

text: The only land connection Armenia had with Karabakh was through the narrow, mountainous Lachin corridor which could only be reached by helicopters. The region's only airport was in Khojaly, a small town north of Stepanakert and a population of somewhere between 6,000–10,000 people. Khojaly had been serving as an artillery base from which Grad rockets were launched upon the civilian population of capital Stepanakert:


title: First Nagorno-Karabakh War

text: On some days as many as 400 Grad rockets rained down on Armenian multi-story apartments. By late February, the Armenian forces reportedly warned about the upcoming attack and issued an ultimatum that unless the Azerbaijanis stopped the shelling from Khojaly they would seize the town.


title: First Nagorno-Karabakh War

text: By late February, Khojaly had largely been cut off. On 26 February, Armenian forces, with the aid of some armored vehicles from the 366th, mounted an offensive to capture Khojaly. According to the Azerbaijani side and the affirmation of other sources including Human Rights Watch, the Moscow-based human rights organization Memorial and the biography of a leading Armenian commander, Monte Melkonian, documented and published by his brother, after Armenian forces captured Khojaly, they killed several hundred civilians evacuating from the town. Armenian forces had previously stated they would attack the city and leave a land corridor for them to escape through. When the attack began, the attacking Armenian force easily outnumbered and overwhelmed the defenders who along with the civilians attempted to retreat north to the Azerbaijani held city of Agdam. The airport's runway was found to have been intentionally destroyed, rendering it temporarily useless. The attacking forces then went on to pursue those fleeing through the corridor and opened fire upon them, killing scores of civilians. Facing charges of an intentional massacre of civilians by international groups, Armenian government officials denied the occurrence of a massacre and asserted an objective of silencing the artillery coming from Khojaly.


title: First Nagorno-Karabakh War

text: An exact body count was never ascertained but conservative estimates have placed the number to 485. The official death toll according to Azerbaijani authorities for casualties suffered during the events of 25–26 February is 613 civilians, of them 106 women and 83 children. On 3 March 1992, the "Boston Globe" reported over 1,000 people had been slain over four years of conflict. It quoted the mayor of Khojaly, Elmar Mamedov, as also saying 200 more were missing, 300 were held hostage and 200 injured in the fighting.


title: First Nagorno-Karabakh War

text: A report published in 1992 by the human rights organization Helsinki Watch stated that their inquiry found that the Azerbaijani OMON and "the militia, still in uniform and some still carrying their guns, were interspersed with the masses of civilians" which may have been the reason why Armenian troops fired upon them.


title: First Nagorno-Karabakh War

text: Under pressure from the APF due to the mismanagement of the defence of Khojaly and the safety of its inhabitants, Mutalibov was forced to submit his resignation to the National Assembly of Azerbaijan.


title: First Nagorno-Karabakh War

text: On 26 January 1992, the Azerbaijani forces stationed in Shusha encircled and attacked the nearby Armenian village Karintak (located on the way from Shusha to Stepanakert) in an attempt to capture it. This operation was conducted by Azerbaijan's then-defence minister Tajedin Mekhtiev and was supposed to prepare the ground for a future attack on Stepanakert. The operation failed as the villagers and the Armenian fighters strongly retaliated. Mekhtiev was ambushed and up to 70 Azeri soldiers died. After this debacle, Mekhtiev left Shusha and was fired as defence minister.


title: First Nagorno-Karabakh War

text: On 28 March, Azerbaijani troops deployed to attack Stepanakert, attacked Armenian positions above the village Kərkicahan from the village of Dzhangasan. During the afternoon of the next day, Azerbaijani units took up positions in close proximity to the city, but were quickly repulsed by the Armenians.


title: First Nagorno-Karabakh War

text: In the ensuing months after the capture of Khojaly, Azerbaijani commanders holding out in the region's last bastion of Shusha began a large-scale artillery bombardment with Grad rocket launchers against Stepanakert. By April, the shelling had forced many of the 50,000 people living in Stepanakert to seek refuge in underground bunkers and basements. Facing ground incursions near the city's outlying areas, military leaders in Nagorno-Karabakh organized an offensive to take the town.


title: First Nagorno-Karabakh War

text: On 8 May a force of several hundred Armenian troops accompanied by tanks and helicopters attacked Shusha. Fierce fighting took place in the town's streets and several hundred men were killed on both sides. Although the Armenians were outnumbered and outgunned by the Azerbaijani Army, they managed to capture the town and force the Azerbaijanis to retreat on 9 May.


title: First Nagorno-Karabakh War

text: The capture of Shusha resonated loudly in neighbouring Turkey. Its relations with Armenia had grown better after it had declared its independence from the Soviet Union; they gradually worsened as a result of Armenia's gains in the Nagorno-Karabakh region. Turkey's prime minister Suleyman Demirel said that he was under intense pressure by his people to have his country intervene and aid Azerbaijan. Demirel was opposed to such an intervention, saying that Turkey's entrance into the war would trigger an even greater Muslim-Christian conflict (Turkey is overwhelmingly Muslim).


title: First Nagorno-Karabakh War

text: Turkey never sent troops to Azerbaijan but did contribute substantial military aid and advisers. In May 1992, the military commander of the CIS forces, Marshal Yevgeny Shaposhnikov, issued a warning to Western nations, especially the United States, to not interfere with the conflict in the Caucasus, stating it would "place us [the Commonwealth] on the verge of a third world war and that cannot be allowed".


title: First Nagorno-Karabakh War

text: The Azerbaijani parliament blamed Yaqub Mammadov, then acting President of Azerbaijan, for Shusha's loss, and removed him from power. This cleared Mutalibov of any responsibility after the loss of Khojaly, and paved the way for reinstatement him as president on 15 May 1992. Many Azerbaijanis objected to this move, viewing as an attempt to forestall parliamentary elections due in June of that year. The Azerbaijani parliament at that time was made up of former leaders from the country's communist regime, and the losses of Khojaly and Shusha led to further agitation for free elections.


title: First Nagorno-Karabakh War

text: To add to the turmoil, on 18 May Armenian forces launched an offensive to take the town of Lachin, situated along a narrow corridor that separated Armenia proper from Nagorno-Karabakh. The town was poorly guarded, and the next day Armenian forces took control of the town and opened the road that linked the region to Armenia. The capture of Lachin allowed an overland route for supply convoys to Karabakh.


title: First Nagorno-Karabakh War

text: The loss of Lachin was the final blow to Mutalibov's regime. Demonstrations were held despite Mutalibov's ban and an armed coup was staged by Popular Front activists. Fighting between government forces and Popular Front supporters escalated as the political opposition seized the parliament building in Baku as well as the airport and presidential office. On 16 June 1992 Abulfaz Elchibey was elected leader of Azerbaijan with many political leaders from the Azerbaijan Popular Front Party were elected into the parliament. The instigators lambasted Mutalibov as an undedicated and weak leader in the war in Karabakh. Elchibey was staunchly opposed to asking for help from Russians, preferring instead to build closer ties with Turkey.


title: First Nagorno-Karabakh War

text: There were times when the fighting also spilled outside the Nagorno-Karabakh region. Nakhchivan, for example, was shelled by Armenian troops in May 1992.


title: First Nagorno-Karabakh War

text: On 12 June 1992, the Azeri military, along with Huseynov's own brigade, used a large amount of tanks, armored personnel carriers and attack helicopters to launch a three-day offensive from the relatively unguarded region of Shahumian, north of Nagorno-Karabakh, in the process taking back several dozen villages in the Shahumian region originally held by Armenian forces. Another reason the front collapsed so effortlessly was because it was manned by the volunteer detachments from Armenia, having abandoned their positions to return to Armenia proper after the capture of Lachin. The offensive prompted the Armenian government to openly threaten Azerbaijan that it would overtly intervene and assist the separatists fighting in Karabakh.


title: First Nagorno-Karabakh War

text: The scale of the Azerbaijani offensive prompted the Armenian government to threaten Azerbaijan with directly intervening and assisting the separatists. The assault forced Armenian forces to retreat south towards Stepanakert, where Karabakh commanders contemplated destroying a vital hydroelectric dam in the Martakert region if the offensive was not halted. An estimated 30,000 Armenian refugees were also forced to flee to the capital as the assaulting forces had taken back nearly half of Nagorno-Karabakh. However, the offensive soon ground to a halt as helicopter gunships began picking away at the columns.


title: First Nagorno-Karabakh War

text: On 18 June 1992, a state of emergency was announced throughout the NKR. On 15 August, the Committee for State Defense of the NKR was created, headed by Robert Kocharyan and later by Serzh Sargsyan. Partial mobilization was called for, which covered sergeants and privates in the NKR, NKR men available for military service aged 18–40, officers up to the age of 50 and women with previous military training. Many of the crew members of the armored units in the offensive belonged to the Russian 23rd Division of the 4th Army, based out of Ganja and, ironically, as were the units that eventually stopped them. According to an Armenian government official, they were able to persuade Russian military units to bombard and effectively halt the advance within a few days; allowing the Armenian government to recuperate for the losses and mount a counteroffensive to restore the original lines of the front.


title: First Nagorno-Karabakh War

text: New efforts at peace talks were initiated by Iranian President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani in the first half of 1992, after the events in Khojaly and the resignation of Azerbaijani President Ayaz Mutallibov. Iranian diplomats conducted shuttle diplomacy and were able to bring the new president of Azerbaijan Yaqub Mammadov and President of Armenia Levon Ter-Petrosian to Tehran for bilateral talks on 7 May 1992. The Tehran Communiqué was signed by Mammadov, Ter-Petrosian and Rafsanjani following the agreement of the parties to international legal norms, stability of borders and to deal with the refugee crisis. The peace efforts were disrupted on the next day when Armenian troops captured the town of Shusha and completely failed following the capture of Lachin on 18 May.


title: First Nagorno-Karabakh War

text: In mid-1992, the CSCE (later to become the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe), created the Minsk Group in Helsinki which comprised eleven nations and was co-chaired by France, Russia and the United States with the purpose of mediating a peace deal with Armenia and Azerbaijan. In their annual summit in 1992, the organization failed to address and solve the many new problems that had arisen since the Soviet Union collapsed, much less the Karabakh conflict. The wars in Yugoslavia, Moldova's war with the breakaway republic of Transnistria, the secessionist movement in Chechnya and Georgia's renewed disputes with Russia, Abkhazia, and Ossetia were all top agenda issues that involved various ethnic groups fighting each other.


title: First Nagorno-Karabakh War

text: The CSCE proposed the use of NATO and CIS peacekeepers to monitor ceasefires and protect shipments of humanitarian aid being sent to displaced refugees. Several ceasefires were put into effect after the June offensive, but the implementation of a European peacekeeping force, endorsed by Armenia, never came to fruition. The idea of sending 100 international observers to Karabakh was once raised but talks broke down completely between Armenian and Azerbaijani leaders in July. Russia was especially opposed to allowing a multinational peacekeeping force from NATO to entering the Caucasus, seeing it as a move that encroached on its "backyard".


title: First Nagorno-Karabakh War

text: In late June, a new, smaller Azerbaijani offensive was planned, this time against the town of Martuni in the southeastern half of Karabakh. The attack force consisted of several dozen tanks and armored fighting vehicles along with a complement of several infantry companies massing along the Machkalashen and Jardar fronts near Martuni and Krasnyy Bazar. Martuni's regimental commander, Monte Melkonian, although lacking heavy armor, managed to beat back repeated assaults by the Azerbaijani forces.


title: First Nagorno-Karabakh War

text: In late August 1992, Nagorno-Karabakh's government was in order disorder, and its members resigned on 17 August. Power was subsequently assumed by a council called the State Defense Committee and chaired by Robert Kocharyan. The committee would temporarily govern the enclave until war's end. At the same time, Azerbaijan also launched attacks by fixed-wing aircraft, often bombing civilian targets. Kocharyan accused Azerbaijan of intentionally targeting civilians in the aerial campaign. He also blamed Russia for allowing its army's weapons stockpiles to be sold or transferred to Azerbaijan.


title: First Nagorno-Karabakh War

text: As winter approached, both sides largely abstained from launching full-scale offensives so as to preserve resources, such as gas and electricity, for domestic use. Despite the opening of an economic highway to the residents living in Karabakh, both Armenia and the enclave suffered a great deal due to the economic blockades imposed by Azerbaijan. While not completely shut off, material aid sent through Turkey arrived sporadically.


title: First Nagorno-Karabakh War

text: Experiencing both food shortages and power shortages, after the shutting down of the Metsamor nuclear power plant, Armenia's economic outlook appeared bleak: in Georgia, a new bout of civil wars against separatists in Abkhazia and Ossetia began, and supply convoys were raided and the only oil pipeline leading from Russia to Armenia was repeatedly destroyed. As in 1991–1992, the 1992–1993 winter was especially cold, as many families throughout Armenia and Karabakh were left without heating and hot water.


title: First Nagorno-Karabakh War

text: Grain had become difficult to procure. The Armenian Diaspora raised money and donated supplies to Armenia. In December, two shipments of 33,000 tons of grain and 150 tons of infant formula arrived from the United States via the Black Sea port of Batumi, Georgia. In February 1993, the European Community sent 4.5 million ECUs to Armenia. Iran also helped by providing power and electricity to Armenian. Elchibey's acrimonious stance toward Iran and provocative remarks about unifying with Iran's Azerbaijani minority alienated relations between the two countries.


title: First Nagorno-Karabakh War

text: Azerbaijanis were displaced as internal and international refugees were forced to live in makeshift camps provided by both the Azerbaijan government and Iran. The International Red Cross also distributed blankets to the Azerbaijanis and noted that by December, enough food was being allocated for the refugees. Azerbaijan also struggled to rehabilitate its petroleum industry, the country's chief export. Its oil refineries were not generating at full capacity and production quotas fell well short of estimates. In 1965, the oil fields in Baku were producing 21.5 million tons of oil annually; by 1988, that number had dropped down to almost 3.3 million. Outdated Soviet refinery equipment and a reluctance by Western oil companies to invest in a war region where pipelines would routinely be destroyed prevented Azerbaijan from fully exploiting its oil wealth.


title: First Nagorno-Karabakh War

text: Despite a brutal winter, both sides looked to the new year to break the inertia of the war. Azerbaijan's President Elchibey expressed optimism toward bringing solution to the conflict with Armenia's Ter-Petrosyan. Glimmers of such hope quickly began to fade in January 1993, despite the calls for a new ceasefire by Boris Yeltsin and George H. W. Bush. Armenian forces launched a new round of attacks that overran villages in northern Karabakh that had been held by the Azerbaijanis since the previous year. After Armenian losses in 1992, Russia started massive armament shipments to Armenia in the following year. Russia supplied Armenia with arms with a total cost of US$1 billion in value in 1993. According to Russian general Lev Rokhlin, Russians supplied Armenians with such massive arms shipment in return for "money, personal contacts and lots of vodkas".


title: First Nagorno-Karabakh War

text: Frustration over these military defeats took a toll on the domestic front in Azerbaijan. Azerbaijan's military had grown more desperate and defence minister Gaziev and Huseynov's brigade turned to Russian help, a move which ran against Elchibey's policies and was construed as insubordination. Political infighting and arguments about where to shift military units between the country's ministry of the interior Isgandar Hamidov and Gaziev led to the latter's resignation on 20 February. Armenia was similarly wracked by political turmoil and growing Armenian dissension against President Ter-Petrosyan.


title: First Nagorno-Karabakh War

text: Situated west of northern Karabakh, outside the official boundaries of the region, was the rayon of Kalbajar, which bordered Armenia. With a population of about 60,000, the several dozen villages were made up of Azerbaijani and Kurds. In March 1993, the Armenian-held areas near the Sarsang reservoir in Mardakert were reported to have been coming under attack by the Azerbaijanis. After successfully defending the Martuni region, Melkonian's fighters were tasked to move to capture the region of Kalbajar, where the incursions and artillery shelling were said to have been coming from.


title: First Nagorno-Karabakh War

text: Scant military opposition by the Azerbaijanis allowed Melkonian's fighters to gain a foothold in the region and along the way capture several abandoned armored vehicles and tanks. At 2:45 pm, on 2 April, Armenian forces from two directions advanced toward Kalbajar in an attack that struck Azerbaijani armor and troops entrenched near the Ganja-Kalbajar intersection. Azerbaijani forces were unable to halt the advances made by Armenian armor and were wiped out completely. The second attack toward Kalbajar also quickly overran the defenders. By 3 April, Armenian forces were in possession of Kalbajar.


title: First Nagorno-Karabakh War

text: On 30 April, the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) passed Resolution 822, co-sponsored by Turkey and Pakistan, demanding the immediate cessation of all hostilities and the withdrawal of all occupying forces from Kalbajar. Human Rights Watch concluded that during the Kalbajar offensive Armenian forces committed numerous violations of the rules of war, including the forcible exodus of a civilian population, indiscriminate fire, and taking of hostages.


title: First Nagorno-Karabakh War

text: The political repercussions were also felt in Azerbaijan when Huseynov embarked on his "march to Baku". Frustrated with what he felt was Elchibey's incompetence and demoted from his rank of colonel, his brigade advanced in early June from its base in Ganja toward Baku with the explicit aim of unseating the president. Elchibey stepped down from office on 18 June and power was assumed by then parliamentary member Heydar Aliyev. On 1 July, Huseynov was appointed prime minister of Azerbaijan. As acting president, Aliyev disbanded 33 voluntary battalions of the Popular Front, which he deemed politically unreliable.


title: First Nagorno-Karabakh War

text: The Armenian side took advantage of the turmoil in Baku, which had left the Karabakh front almost undefended. The following four months of political instability in Azerbaijan led to the loss of control over five districts, as well as the north of Nagorno-Karabakh. Azerbaijani military forces were unable to put up much resistance in the face of Armenian advances and abandoned most of their positions with little resistance. In late June 1993, they were driven out from Mardakert, losing their final foothold of the enclave. By July, Armenian forces were seen preparing for to attack and capture Agdam, another district that fell outside of Nagorno-Karabakh, with the aim of widening a cordon that would keep towns and villages and their positions out of the range of Azerbaijani artillery.


title: First Nagorno-Karabakh War

text: On 4 July Armenian forces commenced an artillery bombardment on Agdam, destroying many parts of the town. Soldiers, along with civilians, began to evacuate Agdam. Facing military collapse, Aliyev resumed talks with the Karabakh government and Minsk Group officials. In mid-August, Armenians massed a force to take Fuzuli and Jebrail, two regions in Azerbaijan proper.


title: First Nagorno-Karabakh War

text: In the wake of the Armenian offensive in these two regions, Turkish prime minister Tansu Çiller demanded that the Armenians withdraw and issued a warning to the Armenian government not to undertake any offensives in Nakhichevan. Thousands of Turkish troops were sent to the border between Turkey and Armenia in early September. Russian forces in Armenia, in turn, likewise mobilized in the country's northwest border.


title: First Nagorno-Karabakh War

text: By early September, Azerbaijani forces were in a state of complete disarray. Many of the heavy weapons they had received and bought from the Russians were either taken out of action or abandoned during battles. Since the June 1992 offensive, Armenian forces had captured dozens of tanks, light armor, and artillery from Azerbaijan. According to Monte Melkonian, his forces in Martuni alone had captured or destroyed a total of 55 T-72s, 24 BMP-2s, 15 APCs and 25 heavy artillery pieces since the June 1992 Goranboy offensive. Serzh Sargsyan, the then-military leader of the Karabakh armed forces, calculated a total of 156 tanks captured over the course of the war.


title: First Nagorno-Karabakh War

text: Azerbaijan was so desperate for manpower that Aliyev recruited 1,000–1,500 mujahadeen fighters from Afghanistan. Azerbaijan's government refuted the claim at the time, although the Armenian side provided correspondence and photographs to support their presence in the region. A shady American petroleum company, MEGA OIL, was also alleged to have sent American military trainers to Azerbaijan in order to acquire oil drilling rights in the country.


title: First Nagorno-Karabakh War

text: The aerial warfare in Karabakh involved primarily fighter jets and attack helicopters. The primary transport helicopters of the war were the Mi-8 and its cousin, the Mi-17 and were used extensively by both sides. The most widely used helicopter gunship by both sides was the Soviet-made Mi-24 Krokodil. Armenia's active air force at the time consisted of only two Su-25 ground support bombers, one of which was lost due to friendly fire. There were also several Su-22s and Su-17s; these ageing craft took a backseat for the duration of the war.


title: First Nagorno-Karabakh War

text: Azerbaijan's air force was composed of 45 combat aircraft which were often piloted by experienced Russian and Ukrainian mercenaries from the former Soviet military. They flew mission sorties over Karabakh with such sophisticated jets as the MiG-25 and Sukhoi Su-24 and with older-generation Soviet fighter bombers, such as the MiG-21. They were reported to have been paid a monthly salary of over 5,000 rubles and flew bombing campaigns from air force bases in Azerbaijan, often targeting Stepanakert. These pilots, like the men from the Soviet interior forces at the onset of the conflict, were also poor and took the jobs as a means of supporting their families. Several were shot down over the city by Armenian forces and according to one of the pilots' commanders, with assistance provided by the Russians. Many of these pilots risked the threat of execution by Armenian forces if they were shot down. The setup of the defence system severely hampered Azerbaijan's ability to carry out and launch more airstrikes.


title: First Nagorno-Karabakh War

text: Azerbaijani fighter jets attacked civilian airplanes too. An Armenian civil aviation Yak-40 plane traveling Stepanakert Airport to Yerevan with 34 passengers and crew was attacked by an Azerbaijani Su-25. Though suffering engine failure and a fire in rear of the plane, it eventually made a safe landing in Armenian territory.


title: First Nagorno-Karabakh War

text: Below is a table listing the number of aircraft that were used by Armenia and Azerbaijan during the war.


title: First Nagorno-Karabakh War

text: In October 1993, Aliyev was formally elected president of Azerbaijan and promised to bring social order to the country in addition to recapturing the lost regions. In October, Azerbaijan joined the CIS. The winter season was marked with similar conditions as in the previous year, both sides scavenging for wood and harvesting foodstuffs months in advance. Two subsequent UNSC resolutions on the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict were passed, 874 and 884, in October and November. Reemphasizing the same points as the previous two, they acknowledged Nagorno-Karabakh as a region of Azerbaijan.


title: First Nagorno-Karabakh War

text: In early January 1994, Azerbaijani forces and Afghan guerrillas recaptured part of the Fuzuli district, including the railway junction of Horadiz on the Iranian border, but failed to recapture the town of Fuzuli itself. On 10 January an offensive was launched by Azerbaijan toward the region of Mardakert in an attempt to recapture the northern section of the enclave. The offensive managed to advance and take back several parts of Karabakh in the north and to the south but soon petered out. In response, Armenia began sending conscripts and regular Army and Interior Ministry troops to stop the Azerbaijani advance in Karabakh. To bolster the ranks of its army, the Armenian government issued a decree that instituted a three-month call-up for men up to age 45 and resorted to press-gang raids to enlist recruits. Several active-duty Armenian Army soldiers were captured by the Azerbaijani forces.


title: First Nagorno-Karabakh War

text: Azerbaijan's offensives grew more desperate as boys as young as 16, with little to no training, were recruited and sent to take part in ineffective human wave attacks (a tactic often compared to the one employed by Iran during the Iran–Iraq War). The two offensives that took place in the winter cost Azerbaijan as many as 5,000 lives (at the loss of several hundred Armenians). The main Azerbaijani offensive was aimed at recapturing the Kalbajar district, which would thus threaten the Lachin corridor. The attack initially met little resistance and was successful in capturing the vital Omar Pass. As the Armenian forces reacted, the bloodiest clashes of the war ensued and the Azerbaijani forces were soundly defeated. In a single clash, Azerbaijan lost about 1,500 of its soldiers after the failed offensive in Kalbajar.


title: First Nagorno-Karabakh War

text: While the political leadership changed hands several times in Azerbaijan, most Armenian soldiers in Karabakh claimed that the Azerbaijani youth and Azerbaijanis themselves, were demoralized and lacked a sense of purpose and commitment to fighting the war. Russian professor Georgiy I. Mirsky supported this contention in his 1997 book "On Ruins of Empire", writing that "Karabakh does not matter to Azerbaijanis as much as it does to Armenians. Probably, this is why young volunteers from Armenia proper have been much more eager to fight and die for Karabakh than the Azerbaijanis have." A "New York Times" correspondent who visited the region in 1994 noted that, "In Stepanakert, it is impossible to find an able-bodied man – whether volunteer from Armenia or local resident – out of uniform. [Whereas in] Azerbaijan, draft-age men hang out in cafes." At the outset of the conflict, Andrei Sakharov famously remarked: "For Azerbaijan, the issue of Karabakh is a matter of ambition, for the Armenians of Karabakh, it is a matter of life or death."


title: First Nagorno-Karabakh War

text: After six years of intense fighting, both sides were ready for a ceasefire. Azerbaijan, with its manpower exhausted and aware that Armenian forces had an unimpeded path to march on to Baku, counted on a new ceasefire proposal from either the OSCE or Russia. As the final battles of the conflict took place near Shahumyan, in a series of brief engagements in Gulustan, Armenian and Azerbaijani diplomats met in the early part of 1994 to hammer out the details of the ceasefire. On 5 May, with Russia acting as a mediator, all parties agreed to cease hostilities and vowed to observe a ceasefire that would go into effect at 12:01 AM on 12 May. The agreement was signed by the respective defence ministers of the three principal warring parties (Armenia, Azerbaijan and the Republic of Artsakh). In Azerbaijan, many welcomed the end of hostilities. Sporadic fighting continued in some parts of the region but all sides vowed to abide by the terms of the ceasefire.


title: First Nagorno-Karabakh War

text: Coverage of the war was provided by a number of journalists from both sides, including Vardan Hovhannisyan, who won the 2007 Tribeca Film Festival's prize for a best new documentary filmmaker for his "A Story of People in War and Peace", and Chingiz Mustafayev, who was posthumously awarded the title of National Hero of Azerbaijan. Armenian-Russian journalist Dmitri Pisarenko who spent a year at the front line and filmed many of the battles later wrote that both Armenian and Azerbaijani journalists were preoccupied with echoing the official stands of their respective governments and that "objectiveness was being sacrificed for ideology." Armenian military commanders were eager to give interviews following Azerbaijani offensives when they were able to criticise the other side for launching heavy artillery attacks that the "small-numbered but proud Armenians" had to fight off. Yet they were reluctant to speak out when Armenian troops seized a village outside Nagorno-Karabakh in order to avoid justifying such acts. Therefore, Armenian journalists felt the need to be creative enough to portray the event as "an Armenian counter-offensive" or as "a necessary military operation".


title: First Nagorno-Karabakh War

text: Bulgarian journalist Tsvetana Paskaleva is noted for her coverage of Operation Ring. Some foreign journalists previously concerned with emphasizing the Soviets conceding in the Cold War, gradually shifted toward presenting the USSR as a country awash in ethnic conflict, the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict being one of them.


title: First Nagorno-Karabakh War

text: Due to lack of available information about the roots and causes of the conflict, foreign reporters filled the information vacuum with constant references to the religious factor, i.e. the fact that Armenians were predominantly Christian, whereas Azeris were predominantly Muslim; a factor which in fact was virtually irrelevant in the course of the entire conflict. Readers already aware of rising military Islamism in the Middle East were considered a perfect audience to be informed of a case of "Muslim oppressors victimising a Christian minority". Religion was unduly stressed more than political, territorial and ethnic factors, with very rare references to democratic and self-determination movements in both countries. It was not until the Khojaly Massacre in late February 1992, when hundreds of civilian Azeris were massacred by Armenian units, that references to religion largely disappeared, as being contrary to the neat journalistic scheme where "Christian Armenians" were shown as victims and "Muslim Azeris" as their victimisers. A study of the four largest Canadian newspapers covering the event showed that the journalists tended to present the massacre of Azeris as a secondary issue, as well as to rely on Armenian sources, to give priority to Armenian denials over Azerbaijani "allegations" (which were described as "grossly exaggerated"), to downplay the scale of death, not to publish images of the bodies and mourners, and not to mention the event in editorials and opinion columns.


title: First Nagorno-Karabakh War

text: The Nagorno-Karabakh conflict remains one of several frozen post-Soviet conflicts, alongside Georgia's conflicts with Abkhazia and South Ossetia, the Transnistria conflict and the Russo-Ukrainian War. Karabakh remains under the jurisdiction of the government of the unrecognized but "de facto" independent Republic of Nagorno-Karabakh (now the "Republic of Artsakh"), which maintains its own uniformed military, the Nagorno-Karabakh Defense Army.


title: First Nagorno-Karabakh War

text: Contrary to media reports that nearly always mentioned the religions of the Armenians and Azerbaijanis, religious aspects never gained significance as an additional "casus belli", and the Karabakh conflict has remained primarily an issue of territory and the human rights of Armenians in Karabakh. Since 1995, the co-chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group has been mediating with the governments of Armenia and Azerbaijan for a new solution. Numerous proposals have been made which have primarily been based on both sides making several concessions. One such proposal stipulated that as Armenian forces withdrew from the seven regions surrounding Karabakh, Azerbaijan would share some of its economic assets including profits from an oil pipeline that would go from Baku through Armenia to Turkey. Other proposals also included that Azerbaijan would provide the broadest form of autonomy to Karabakh next to granting it full independence. Armenia has also been pressured by being excluded from major economic projects throughout the region, including the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline and Kars-Tbilisi-Baku railway.


title: First Nagorno-Karabakh War

text: According to Armenia's former president, Levon Ter-Petrosyan, by giving certain Karabakh territories to Azerbaijan, the Karabakh conflict would have been resolved in 1997. A peace agreement could have been concluded and a status for Nagorno-Karabakh would have been determined. Ter-Petrosyan noted years later that the Karabakh leadership approach was maximalist and "they thought they could get more." Most autonomy proposals have been rejected by the Armenians, who consider it as a matter that is not negotiable. Likewise, Azerbaijan warns the country is ready to free its territories by war, but still prefers to solve the problem by peaceful means. On 30 March 1998, Robert Kocharyan was elected president and continued to reject calls for making a deal to resolve the conflict. In 2001, Kocharyan and Aliyev met in Key West, Florida for peace talks sponsored by the OSCE. While several Western diplomats expressed optimism, failure to prepare the populations of either country for compromise reportedly thwarted hopes for a peaceful resolution.


title: First Nagorno-Karabakh War

text: An estimated 400,000 Armenians living in Azerbaijan fled to Armenia or Russia and a further 30,000 came from Karabakh. Many of those who left Karabakh returned after the war ended. An estimated 800,000 Azerbaijanis were displaced from the fighting including those from both Armenia and Karabakh. Various other ethnic groups living in Karabakh were also forced to live in refugee camps built by both the Azerbaijani and Iranian governments. While Azerbaijan has repeatedly claimed that 20% of its territory has fallen under Armenian control, other sources have given figures as high 40% (the number comes down to 9% if Nagorno-Karabakh itself is excluded).


title: First Nagorno-Karabakh War

text: The First Nagorno-Karabakh War has given rise to strong anti-Armenianism in Azerbaijan and anti-Azerbaijani sentiment in Armenia. The ramifications of the war were said to have played a part in the February 2004 murder of Armenian Lieutenant Gurgen Markaryan who was hacked to death with an axe by his Azerbaijani counterpart, Ramil Safarov at a NATO training seminar in Budapest, Hungary.


title: First Nagorno-Karabakh War

text: Presumably trying to erase any traces of Armenian heritage, the Azerbaijani government ordered its military the destruction of thousands of unique medieval Armenian gravestones, known as "khachkars", at a massive historical cemetery in Julfa, Nakhichevan. This destruction was temporarily halted when first revealed in 1998, but then continued on to completion in 2005.