A word from the Namak team
We were shocked and saddened to learn about the Azerbaijani military offensive on Armenia on September 13. We took some time to think about how Namak should respond to the situation.
While we contemplated how best to cover this rapidly evolving and urgent story, our co-founder Astrig Agopian headed to Armenia to report for Namak and various European news outlets.
This week, we are back in your inbox with a dispatch from on the ground. Moving forward, we will continue to profile Armenians who inspire us with their creativity and excellence during these difficult times for our nation.
With gratitude to our readers around the world,
Astrig and Maral
Dispatch from Armenia: Praying for the best while preparing for the worst
There is a shift in peoples’ mentalities, a feeling that this time it’s going to be bigger, and they need to be ready because no one but Armenians themselves will defend their country.
The flight from Paris to Yerevan on September 15 was almost full. Most passengers were of Armenian origin. A few Russians.
Two days after Azerbaijan launched an attack on military positions and civilian infrastructures inside Armenia, the atmosphere was quite heavy. People were checking their phones a lot, a group of junior soccer players was playing around, before getting serious when conversations switched to the topic of war.
Most of us had the same thoughts in mind: Is it starting again? When will it stop? What will happen exactly? “I am old anyway, I’d rather die there than far away,” said a tatik talking to a young woman.
When I arrived, everything actually looked like usual. Two of my friends picked me up at the airport. We ran out of gas five minutes before we reached the gas station. Something always happens on the way from Zvartnots, so really, it was like usual. My friend went to get gas in a plastic bottle, we made the car move again and arrived in Yerevan in the middle of the night.
My decision to fly to Armenia was very sudden, driven by a sense of urgency. I was supposed to be in Paris for a few days, and then go to a friend’s wedding, before heading back to Ukraine to report on the war there.
But when I learned that the city of Jermuk in Armenia had been shelled, I realized this was unprecedented. I also knew that with so many global events unfolding right now, and because the media industry is struggling financially, nobody would send me to Armenia.
My journalistic instinct, as much as my personal worry, pushed me to go. I slept a few hours after arriving in Yerevan and then started working non-stop, reporting, producing, translating, assisting foreign colleagues. Editors also understood the new level that the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan had reached, and I began receiving assignments very quickly.
A lifetime of conflicts
On the 16th, I received my accreditation and traveled to the border village of Sotk, in Gegharkunik region, with other journalists, as these areas are currently only accessible through press tours or under the supervision of the Armenian MFA and MOD. It’s a small village, with fewer than 1,000 residents, which I had already been to in 2021 during clashes at the border. The village is known for its gold mine. Several houses were damaged by rockets. There were few people left, all of whom were very scared.
I met Lena, whose house was partially destroyed. Luckily, she had fled with her husband and stepmother right before their home was hit. Their son was killed in 2006 in the Nagorno-Karabakh region of Hadrut during clashes with the Azerbaijani army. Valery, her husband, was born in Azerbaijan and his family fled the pogroms in Baku and nearby cities in 1988.
“I am so afraid that they will shell again that we drive towards Vardenis and sleep in our car there at night,” Lena said. “But we then come back here because I have to take care of my cows, that’s how I make a living.”
I realized during my reports on the border that many of the people living there had already been displaced once, either from Nagorno-Karabakh or Azerbaijan. And as Lena explained, Sotk was populated by Azerbaijanis before the First Nagorno-Karabakh War. The populations in the border villages are also usually dependent on the land for their livelihood. So leaving is a very hard decision, and many of them are experiencing a second trauma.
Yerevan’s geopolitical chess match
On the 17th, Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi began a historic three-day visit to Armenia. She is the highest-ranking American official to visit Armenia since the end of the Soviet Union. I was on assignment for AFP, so I followed her everywhere from the Tsitsernakaberd Genocide Memorial to her press conference with President of the Armenian National Assembly Alen Simonyan.
“We strongly condemn those attacks -- on behalf of Congress -- which threaten the prospects of the much-needed peace agreement,” Pelosi said. “Armenia has particular importance to us because of the focus on security following an illegal and deadly attack by Azerbaijan on the Armenian territory.” The attack was an “assault on the sovereignty of Armenia,” she added.
There seems to be a real shift in the Armenia/Russia relationship. Moscow’s failure to intervene despite the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) military alliance, along with the growing number of Russian citizens seeking refuge in Armenia (largely opponents of the Russian regime and leader) have liberated an anti-Kremlin discourse in Armenia.
An economist at an anti-CSTO protest in Yerevan told me he is tired of Armenia being the “slave” of Russia. A teacher told me the only solution would be international peacekeepers instead of Russian ones.
But other Armenians are still very careful and scared by this new criticism, especially some people from Nagorno-Karabakh who got into arguments with the anti-CSTO protesters, reminding them that for now, only Russian soldiers are on the Armenian borders and in Nagorno-Karabakh.
View from the ground
On the 19th, I went to Sisian and Noravan in the Syunik region with foreign colleagues. On the way, we stopped at a gas station for some iced coffee. The vendor was a bald man with big blue eyes. He immediately understood we were journalists, and asked, “What will happen? What do you know? Will something happen near Kapan? My son is doing his service there. I am so worried.” I did not know what to tell him. He wished us to stay safe, with a very emotional tone.
In Sisian, we met a family displaced from Aghavno village in Nagorno-Karabakh, which was handed over to Azerbaijan in August. I recognized Tigran, a 12-year-old boy I had met while photographing a banaki qef (army send-off party) there in July. His parents Anna and Armen said something that stayed with me: “Sometimes we’ve had to tell the kids that they can’t go to school because there’s shelling or gunshots and they’ve said, ‘So what? It’s just boom boom.’” Tired of moving all the time, they have chosen to stay in Sisian despite the risks of a new war.
We also talked to local authorities, who said about the Russians, “We see their flags, but not their help,” and are preparing for the worst, although they did not want to be too alarmist either.
About 10 minutes from Sisian, we reached the village of Noravan. The atmosphere was very heavy and tense there. We talked with some elderly people who had stayed in the village. Among them, Anaida, who was originally from Baku and had to leave in the 90s. She kept on saying “We just want peace,” while pouring coffee for us, soldiers and other villagers.
On the 20th, with a group of journalists, we visited the resort city of Jermuk. At that time, the city felt very empty. There were soldiers, but most civilians, women and children had fled. It was a very weird feeling to see houses but also the cable cars and hotels damaged by shelling. Jermuk, of all places, shelled. It seems unreal even while actually seeing it. By now water, electricity and gas are back, but the Azerbaijani troops are only 4.5 kilometers away.
So many people are scared to go back. Nounée, for example, is already a refugee from Karin Tak village near Shushi. “I have seen three wars,” she said. She left Jermuk and is now hosted by her former Nagorno-Karabakh neighbor, Alvart. In a village about 30 minutes away from Yerevan, 13 people, including children, are living in a three-bedroom house. The living conditions were really spartan.
Training for the worst
Back in the capital, I heard more and more stories of people starting paramilitary training. At first I thought it was just a trend or exaggeration. But then I went to an evening class at VOMA, a civilian training center, and was stunned by what I saw. Hundreds of people –– compared to dozens just weeks before –– including many women, learning first aid and tactical training.
Miss Armenia 2021 was there, Armenians from the diaspora, young and old people, from diverse social backgrounds. I went to dinners with creatives and models, who were discussing how and when to join the training. There is a shift in peoples’ mentalities, a feeling that this time it’s going to be bigger, and they need to be ready because no one but Armenians themselves will defend their country.
Another thing has noticeably changed in Yerevan: the number of Russians. Of course there was a first wave after Russia invaded Ukraine, mostly families, activists and young IT workers who opposed the war, who relocated with their companies or just wanted to avoid the sanctions. But this second wave is different. Mostly men, of different socioeconomic backgrounds, very clearly fleeing the partial mobilization announced by Putin. They arrive at the airport from many different cities in Russia, all in the same state: lost, stressed.
Nadia is a 24-year-old graphic designer from Tatarstan who left Russia in 2021. She opened a shelter in her house to welcome Russians fleeing mobilization. She is aware of the irony of these movements of population. “It’s true that before it was people from Armenia and other Soviet republics going to Russia to work. And it’s a racist society, in which they were not treated well. So many landlords said ‘I only rent to Slavic people,’” Nadia said. “But I am very thankful that despite that Armenia welcomes us. We organize Armenian language classes and teach people how to behave to adapt to local culture, as much as we help them look for apartments or do yoga to relieve stress.”
Armenia is maybe the only crazy place in the world right now where you can sit at a café and be surrounded by Russians loudly commenting on the latest Putin speech, Ukrainians wearing their flag and discussing the invasion of their country, Iranians not wearing hijabs or chadors, Americans, Syrians, Armenians… Yerevan has changed a lot in the past months, rents have skyrocketed and the tiny capital now has a big city feel. It also seems like a microcosm of world history changes happening live.
Yet whoever I talk to –– fellow journalists, civilians, military men, academics, politicians –– the same feelings of uncertainty and fear prevail at the moment. That’s it for this dispatch. I hope to be back with more insightful and peaceful news soon.
To check out more of Astrig’s coverage, follow her on Twitter.
In lieu of cultural recommendations, we would like to highlight additional reporting from our colleagues at international media outlets.
To read: Russian media airing increasingly Armenia-skeptic narrative by Ani Meljumyan for Eurasianet.
To watch: Les civils face au conflit entre l'Arménie et l'Azerbaïdjan by Taline Oundjian and Luc Oerthel for France 24.
To read: Name the Aggressor by Karena Avedissian for EVN Report.
To read: Armenians on the border prepare once again for war by Gabriel Gavin for Reaction.
To read: Россия или Запад: кто может остановить войну на Южном Кавказе? by Grigor Atanesian for BBC.
That’s it for today, see you next week!
Questions? Story ideas? An urge to say barev/parev? You can send us a secure email at namaknews@protonmail.com.