On Sept. 19, 2023, Marut Vanyan was scrolling on social media in his living room in Stepanakert, Nagorno-Karabakh, in the house he’d lived in most of his life, when he suddenly heard shelling outside his window, and the city’s sirens took off.
“After that, we, people there, understood that this is the end for Armenians because they can't stay under shelling that continues whole day and night,” he said.
Not long after, Vanyan was one of about 100,000 ethnic Armenians who fled the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region after Azerbaijan’s fast offensive to retake the breakaway territory.