Bagramyan was well aware of the military situation at the Caucasus front during the first months of the world war. In the winter of 1914–15, the Imperial Russian Army was able to withstand and repel the Ottoman Empire's offensive at Sarikamish, and to take the fight to its territory. Bagramyan also began reading harrowing reports in the Russian press of what was taking place against his fellow kinsmen across the border: the Committee of Union and Progress-led government had embarked on a campaign to carry out the systematic destruction of the Ottoman Armenians. He desperately sought to join the military effort but because he was only seventeen and a railway mechanic, he was not subject to conscription. This did not dissuade him from trying, as he later remarked, "My place is at the front."