On February 25 I arrived in Stepanakert for taking a film. Just during the events, as it turned out. That night the Armenian troops stormed the village of Khojaly, where the Azerbaijani forces were firing in direction of Stepanakert and where the only airport of Nagorno Karabakh was located.

Together with doctors, I was in the second echelon of attackers. A few kilometers from Khojaly we suddenly saw that something resembling a dark cloud moves towards us. We heard moans, shouts, swearwords in Azerbaijani and Armenian. The "Cloud" turned to be a cluster of people. There were half-dressed people, a lot of children....

"These are Meskhetian Turks, we have captured them," explained Armenian soldiers that had escorting them.

A woman with three children was the latest one moving in the crowd of Turks. Barefooted in the snow. She barely moved, often falling down. It turned out that the youngest one of her children was two days old only. Two days!

I took the two days old child in my arms and walked on together with the Turks. We were full of tears both of us - me and the woman. Night, mass ... Though on my clothes there were signs due to which those who had assaulted could distinguished each other, I was hit by the butt and scolded a couple of times to hurry. I knew I was not in danger, but I felt captured for a moment. I wish no one to experience it.

In the morning I was in Khojaly. The village was in fires. There were corpses in the streets. I seven killed as I counted, one in police uniform. Then we came under gunfire too. It were the Azerbaijani members of riot squad, shooting from a house where they were entrenched.

The fight near that house continued until the evening. It ended leaving two dead and several wounded from the Armenian side. What happened to the riot police: whether they perished or managed to escape at dusk - I do not know.
I saw no soldiers of the 366th Motor Rifle Regiment during the assault of Khojaly. But I saw with my own eyes the armored army vehicles and artillery bombardment that preceded the attack.

... Two days later, the Turks were released. They took them to the front line in the Askeran region, showed them the way, and let them go. Though they released not all of them, 10 men were still kept in capture. Although, according to the Armenians, they are of little avail: these hostages would not cost even a canister of gasoline. No one need them, they belong to no one. The soldiers guarding the soldiers treated the Turks humanly. Zhanna Galstyan, one of the leaders of the Karabakh resistance, brought some stuffs for the children. Maybe the Karabakh Armenians feel how similar the fate of Turks is compared with their own situation?

The captured Turks have been the worst thing that I have seen in Khojaly those days. These were the people who had fled three years ago from Uzbekistan and were sent by the Azerbaijani authorities to live in Nagorno Karabakh - in the combat zone. Among those expelled from Khojaly there were old women who could have remembered the deportation of 1944 from Georgia. Now this is their third exile ... The last one?

Source: "Mokovskiy Komsomolets", March 1992

^*20 лет спустя, В. Ивлева дала другое интервью, существенно сместив акцены и тем самым полностью исказив свою первоначальную статью.
Compare with the 2010 interview of Vesti.Az

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