// Fleeing the Flames //
Where Home Once Was: The Flight from Nagorno-Karabakh
They arrived with dust on their faces and little more than the clothes on their backs. Mothers clutching children. Elderly men led by trembling hands. Entire families crammed into aging Ladas and crowded trucks, inching through the winding mountain road known as the Lachin Corridor—a path now etched into Armenian memory as both lifeline and heartbreak.
On September 19, 2023, at approximately 13:00, Azerbaijan launched a swift and brutal military offensive on Nagorno-Karabakh, known to Armenians as Artsakh. The assault came after more than nine months of blockade that had cut off food, medicine, fuel, and essential supplies to the region’s 120,000 ethnic Armenian residents. What followed was one of the most dramatic and devastating mass displacements in the region’s post-Soviet history.
Within days, a staggering 100,000 people—virtually the entire Armenian population of the region—fled their homes. Many had already endured displacement before, survivors of earlier wars and ceasefires that left them in a state of limbo. This time, they left behind not only homes, but history, identity, and graves—generations of memory buried under a fresh layer of political violence.
The exodus began on September 24, as people poured into Armenia via the Lachin Corridor, the only road connecting Nagorno-Karabakh to the outside world. The journey was harrowing. Some traveled for days in cold rain and wind with almost nothing to eat, no clear sense of destination, and limited contact with loved ones—especially those still fighting or those feared lost in the massive fuel depot explosion near Stepanakert, which killed at least 170 people and injured hundreds more.
In Yerevan, the Armenian capital, grief and rage gripped the city. Protests erupted in Republic Square and beyond, with citizens demanding government accountability and international intervention. There were clashes with police, sit-ins, and candlelight vigils. The emotional atmosphere shifted from sorrow to seething frustration as Armenians reckoned with the loss of Artsakh—territory many consider inseparable from their cultural and national identity.
The offensive came as no surprise to analysts and residents alike. Azerbaijan had been steadily building its military presence around the region for months, following the 2020 war that already saw significant territorial losses for the Armenian side. But the speed and scale of the 2023 operation stunned even the most hardened observers.
For those who fled, the trauma is layered. Many lived through the first Nagorno-Karabakh war in the 1990s, or the 2020 conflict that reshaped the geopolitical landscape of the South Caucasus. Now, they find themselves displaced once again—many for the third or fourth time in their lives—facing an uncertain future in a country already grappling with economic hardship and political instability.
This photo documentary project seeks to bear witness to their journey—to document not just the scale of displacement, but the human face of this unfolding tragedy. From roadside camps to government shelters, from tear-streaked portraits to moments of resilience, the images aim to capture the sorrow, dignity, and endurance of a people forced to abandon everything, yet again.
This is not the end of the story—it is the beginning of a slow-motion humanitarian crisis inside a small, developing nation already stretched to its limits. As aid workers, doctors, and local families scramble to provide food, warmth, and dignity to the new arrivals, the scars of this latest exodus deepen.
And yet, amid the chaos, a quiet defiance lingers. “We lost our land,” one woman said through tears outside a shelter in Goris, “but not our voice.”
