[4] With the escalation of the Armenian-Azerbaijani military conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh and Shusha becoming one of the few remaining Azerbaijani strongholds in the region, Gaziyev took command of the city's defence in January 1992.

After the resignation of President Ayaz Mutallibov on 6 March 1992, no official body regulated Gaziyev's actions, which provoked him to break ceasefire on a number of occasions including artillery bombardment of Nagorno-Karabakh's capital city Stepanakert.

[5] Two months later, with various political groups chaotically struggling for power, both Shusha and Lachin (city in Azerbaijan-proper linking Nagorno-Karabakh to Armenia) lacked any serious or unified defence and quickly fell to the Armenians.

After Armenians started advancing into Kalbajar, the Popular Front, which had been in power since June 1992, issued a statement in which it blamed Rahim Gaziyev and Elchibey's official representative in Nagorno-Karabakh Surat Huseynov for treason and intentional surrender of Shusha in an attempt to restore Mutallibov as President and indulge Russia's geopolitical interests.

[4] After Heydar Aliyev came to power in June 1993, Gaziyev was elected to the National Assembly and was offered the position of Vice Premier for Defence Industry.

There he declared his full support of ex-President Ayaz Mutallibov who had been living in exile in Russia since summer of 1992 and ironically whom Gaziyev helped to have removed from power just two years earlier.