Nagorno Karabakh – Troops are “always ready to war”, says a commander of a military unit stationed in the Martuni area of the contested Nagorno Karabakh, a landlocked region in the southern Caucuses that formerly made up the outer edges of the Soviet Union. 

For more than two decades, the autonomous region was controlled by Armenian-backed separatists. But it is internationally recognised as the territory of Armenia’s neighbour, Azerbaijan

It flared up in April 2016 when an all-out war erupted between the two factions. More than 400 people died on each side.

Nagorno-Karabakh has been in dispute since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.

After that, separatists backed by Yerevan announced allegiance to Armenia and then declared an independent republic, a move that has not been recognised elsewhere, including by Armenia.

In the subsequent fighting, about 30,000 people were killed, and thousands of others from both ethnic groups fled their homes.

A ceasefire brokered by Russia was signed in 1994, but the two countries have never agreed on a lasting peace.