The Sign to Arakel
On October the 8th, the MoD of Azerbaijan released the following video of the capture of Jabrayil. Watch the starting 30 seconds and see if anything sticks out…
That’s right, the big ol’ (or not) brand spanking white sign to Arakel.
Under ordinary circumstances this would be nothing to write about, however we are talking about the MoD of Azerbaijan here, who has by now shown itself as having a penchant for peddling in fakes and forgeries, and this sign is with high probability another one to add to the collection. However, if by the end of this post you still think the sign is legit, if you present me with a bona fide proof then I owe you some craft Armenian beer!
First thing first, this sign is real; as opposed to the sign to Մարտունի and Հադռութ which was patently fake, a sign to Arakel did exist at this very spot on the roundabout. However, and this is the interesting part of the story, it looked almost exactly the same, but not quite.
The Wikipedia article for Arakel village used to have a photo of the sign, (until it was removed since the sign isn’t in the village itself, but in Jabrayil on the road that leads to Arakel). However if you look at the edit history you will find the photo of the sign, below (cropped and zoomed for your convenience).
This photo was taken on the 1st of September 2015, just over 5 years ago. If you look at the sign closely you’ll notice that it’s very old and tattered: the right side appears to have what might have been the Armenian flag, however it has either faded away or fallen apart; the left side is riddled with bullet holes.
It’s clear then that the sign in the video isn’t the same sign as in this photo, however due to the potato quality of the video, (the photo isn’t that great either, but we can still make out more detail) we can’t do a fair comparison. We are lucky then that the MoD of Azerbaijan released another video featuring the same sign, 6 days later.
Above are the two signs for comparison. It looks like the brand new sign was made to look pretty much exactly like the old one, however whoever did it was either colour blind or didn’t have the right materials (maybe they were in a pinch?). The original had the Russian and English in light blue and the Armenian in what looks like red, however the brand new one is in all grey. Everything else is the same, right down to the font and kerning.
So here’s a question, who would go to the trouble of making a brand new sign to Arakel, situated in Jabrayil? Maybe it was the 10 people (this is just a guess) who live here who decided to save up some pocket money to make a new sign, but forgot to renovate the actual roundabout! On the other hand, it could be the MoD of Azerbaijan who has a crack team of amateur sign makers as support staff?
Bonus Material
One day before the Azerbaijan MoD released their video, the Artsakh Army released a video which showed an ambush around this same roundabout.
Looking at satellite images of the 30th of September and the 10th of October we can see the aftermath (the scorched grass to the north of the roundabout).
Interestingly, this scorched grass isn’t visible in either of the two videos from the Azerbaijan MoD which suggests that the video might be before the ambush.
