This was not the local six-monthly training camps that such men usually attended and rumours of the continuing unrest and violence in Azerbaijan alarmed people whose husbands and fathers had now been sent there (see Baku pogrom). The director of the factory where Valentina was working gave her and her team access to his telex and they sent urgent messages to Gorbachev, Yeltsin and other decision-makers in the Soviet and RSFSR governments.