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 “The battle of Qarintak has encouraged all Armenians of Artsakh. Azerbaijan failed to succeed in Qarintak as the local people were united, strong. Nobody left the village on those days,” Shahen Aydinyan, lieutenant colonel of Artsakh Defense Army, said in a news conference remarking on the battle of Qarintak on January 26, 1992.

“We believed we would succeed. If we yielded it would make the seizure of Shushi ten times difficult,” said the lieutenant colonel.
In the morning of January 26, 1992 the rival, having formed two regular battalions of 800-900 people, attacked the village. The rival planned it beforehand, but was unable to cope with it during the fight.

“We were forced to invade,” Aydinyan remembered an Azerbaijani soldier as saying.

Artsvik Sargsyan from Qarintak said the battle had lasted 12 hours. Azerbaijani side left 132 dead soldiers, but some other sources said they were about 200.

“We would never leave our Qarintak. Azerbaijan could move forward and separate Artsakh into two different parts,” A. Sargsyan said.

“We fought like lions. The battle of Qarintak marked the beginning of the war and we took a part of Karabakh. But there will be time when we’ll take all of it,” A. Baghdasaryan said.