The wooded mountains that make up the enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh fell away into a dusty valley. As I arrived in a crowded minibus a Karabakhi policemen sitting next to me tapped me on the shoulder: “Look how beautiful our country is. These are the ramparts of Armenia.” He smiled, happy to be home. Stepanakert had an eerie calm. Its streets were swept clean, its surfaces restored after the devastating war of the early 1990s by the wealthy Armenian diaspora in faraway Los Angeles, Paris or Moscow.

That afternoon I sat down with Garik Djamarian in the Ministry of Defence. On the wall was a large map of the Caucasus, a colourful piece of cartography showing not three but six independent Caucasian states, including South Ossetia, Abkhazia and ­Nagorno-­Karabakh. “Call me Gary,” he said. “Think of me as something like a commissar in our army.” He gestured to a photo display on his wall such as a headteacher might have of a sports team, only these boys were armed. Did Moscow’s recent attack on Georgia change the picture? He turned his head back to look briefly at the map. “We are not like them in Ossetia or Abkhazia. We are more independent. But things are very unsettled now. These are dangerous times in the Caucasus.”

Soviet-era leftovers littered his bureau, from yellowing books on the marshals of the USSR to the design of his uniform. The frozen Caucasus conflicts had been reignited when the Russians were forced to pull back behind the mountain range.

In Georgia the fires have just gone out but in ­Nagorno-­Karabakh you can still smell the smoke.