Yesterday, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, in his address to the nation, announced the names of two dozen settlements liberated from the occupation in the Fizuli, Jebrail, Khojavend and Zangilan regions. "We are on the verge of a great return," Aliyev said, expressing confidence that the Azerbaijanis will return and live peacefully in the lands liberated from occupation. The successes of the Azerbaijani army were also commented on by the Polish website of the Center for Eastern Studies in the article Nagorno-Karabakh: Azerbaijan's military successes.
In recent days Azerbaijani forces succeeded in taking over some relatively large Armenian-controlled areas, including the vicinity of the reservoir on the River Araks; this section of the river forms the Azerbaijani-Iranian border. The latest events in the combat zone indicate that Baku is consistently implementing its plan, consisting of taking over as much as possible of the area controlled by the separatist Republic of Nagorno-Karabakh before the fighting began. It should be assumed that Azerbaijan will continue its offensive operations. The territorial gains achieved so far already represent a great success for Baku, but it can be assumed that it has even greater ambitions; if that were not the case, Azerbaijan could have called an end to the operation on 18 October, taking advantage of the ceasefire and the fact that the country’s Independence Day fell on that day.
In the present situation, it is most likely that Baku will continue its activities and the Armenians will gradually lose more towns and positions. The Armenian counter-attacks are not bringing the expected results, and the shelling of civilian targets in the Azerbaijani city of Ganja is difficult to justify on military grounds. The speed and effectiveness of Azerbaijan’s offensive actions will be influenced by factors such as the coming winter and the depletion of its resources (although they are much greater than the Armenians’: Azerbaijan has a particular advantage in terms of artillery and drones). Meanwhile, the existence of several defence lines favours the Armenians; Nagorno-Karabakh itself will be the most heavily defended area. The Azerbaijani forces are primarily attacking in a south-westerly direction. If they take more localities in the ‘occupied territories’, they could cover more or less half of the distance (around 50 km as the crow flies) between their starting positions and the interface between the internationally recognised borders of Armenia, Azerbaijan and Iran. Reaching this point would mean not only that they had taken control of the southern road linking Armenia with Nagorno-Karabakh, but it would also open up the option of blocking the Armenian-Iranian border (which is about 35 km in length; the Nakhichevan Autonomous Republic, which belongs to Azerbaijan, lies due west of Armenia on this latitude).
