Throughout the 1930s she and her sister ships – Gruzia, Adzharistan, Abkhazia, Krim and Ukraina – reliably ferried passengers, mail, and cargo between Black Sea ports such as Odessa, Mariupol, Sevastopol, Yalta, and Batum.

By late October 1941 the German Wehrmacht's 11th Army, under General Erich von Manstein, had cut off the Crimean Peninsula, laying siege to Sevastopol.

[3] In early November Armenia, painted with the large red crosses of a hospital ship, was tasked with removing wounded Russian soldiers, medical personnel, and civilians from Sevastopol.

Entire Soviet hospital staffs and civilian officials and their families were taken aboard alongside the thousands of wounded, bound for the town of Tuapse, 400 kilometres (250 mi) away on the northeastern shore of the Black Sea.

After leaving port in the early morning hours of the 7th, Armenia's captain, Vladimir Plaushevsky, received orders to put in at Yalta, a few kilometres east of Sevastopol, where the already overloaded ship was to pick up yet more passengers.

[4][self-published source] The Germans and their Romanian and Italian allies had only a few surface vessels on the Black Sea; as such, it remained essentially under Soviet control throughout the Second World War.

[4][self-published source] At 11:30, about 40 km (25 mi) from Yalta, Armenia was attacked by a Heinkel He 111 medium bomber of 1.Staffel (Lufttorpedo)/KG 28,[6] under the command of Ernst-August Roth, which dropped two torpedoes.