Paskaleva was admitted to a PhD program for documentary film directing at VGIK, Moscow and during her studies in 1990, she went to the South Ossetian region of Georgia to shoot a film about a brewing ethnic conflict there. Shortly afterward, she visited Nagorno Karabakh and made a film on the deportations of Armenian residents of Getashen, Martunashen and Shaumyan by Azerbaijani interior forces backed by the regular Soviet Army units. At that time Paskaleva decided to quit her PhD studies in Moscow and stay in Karabakh in order to cover the conflict between Armenians and Azerbaijanis. She was the first foreign journalist to report on the mass deportations against the Armenians by the Azerbaijani special interior forces (OMON) in Goranboy Rayon during the so-called "Operation Ring" (Rus: Операция Кольцо). Later when a full-scale war between the Armenians and Azerbaijanis erupted, Paskaleva became a freelance reporter for CNN, NBC, French Antenne 2, and the Reuters Agency, as well as Bulgarian, Russian, and German television, sending reports from the hotbeds of the front. During the first Karabakh war (1991–1994) she made seven documentaries about the war.