Author: Karapet Navasardian

Yakov Altunyan in his vineyard in Hadrut before the 2020 Artsakh War

“We were living peacefully in Hadrut, when everything changed in a second,” Yakov Altunyan begins his story. Altunyan lived through three wars, lost his home and homeland and was forcibly displaced. The Weekly met not in his hometown, but in the Armenian city Abovyan.

Altunyan, 55, is from the village of Mets Tagher in the Hadrut region of Artsakh, which has been occupied by Azerbaijan since the 2020 war. However, the bitterness of the war and its aftermath knocked on Yakov’s door during the first Artsakh war in 1993, when at the age of 27 he was wounded by a mine during a reconnaissance and lost his legs. He made a wheelchair that he uses to “walk” with his hands.

Yakov with his wife Inga and two daughters

Altunyan believes that an Armenian man should build a house, create a family and plant a tree. After the first Artsakh war, he married Inga, and they had three children. Now his daughter, Mariam, has given them a grandchild. While rebuilding his grandfather’s house and adjusting to his “walking hands” wheelchair, he took the third step: planting a tree. He has been growing a vineyard since 2007 and made about 2,000 liters of wine from the Khndoghni grapes. Last year, he and his family planned to start their own winery. He also had two mulberry orchards, from which he made the famous Artsakh mulberry vodka.

The family also practiced beekeeping and gave pure honey to their relatives. Altunyan regrets how they left the ripe grapes in the field, wine and vodka in the cellar and famous Hadrutian pickled vegetables in clay, along with everything else in their village.

Producing honey

“On the 17th day after the start of the war, we left the village, because it was impossible to stay under the bombardment. Only the young people were left to defend the village. We left everything and moved to Abovyan. Of course, we thought we would definitely go back. Until the end, we believed that we would go back, that the ceasefires would be strong, but the next day it would start again,” Altunyan says.

Yakov Altunyan and his son Grigor in Abovyan (Photo: Laurent Renaux)

Altunyan’s only son Grigor was a conscript in the army during the war in one of the most intense areas of fighting. He takes pride in his son’s heroism on the battlefield, often proudly showing off the Medal of Courage he was awarded. 

Yakov Altunyan was awarded the Battle Cross/2nd class, Combat Service medal and the Conqueror medal

“We left the graves of our ancestors, our history, our past, our land, our nature, everything. We must take care of our past. It’s not just about remembering. It’s about keeping your footing strong,” Altunyan says. “Now we are in the air. We have no place to set foot. We have become like Western Armenia, because our past has been taken away from us. Maybe because we have remained faithful to humanity, and the centers of human civilization, the West, have been far from it. Now I understand that we should not have been so humane and Christian, because our opponent was not like that. I am not talking only about our enemy, Azerbaijan or Turkey. I am talking about the same centers of Western civilization. We are forgotten because our lives are worthless for them,” he continues. 

Altunyan, who has seen three wars, cannot help but compare them. 

“In the first Artsakh war, we thought about helping each other. The whole nation was united. Maybe the fuel was not enough, the living conditions were not good, but we helped each other. It did not matter if you knew the person in need or not. We all lived in common interest. During this war we were not like that. We were instilled with individuality in order to take victory away from us and change our values. The images of our leaders have also changed. Many generals have become businessmen. In the first war we did not have a professional army, but we had values. Our values have changed,” Altunyan says. 

When speaking about his plans for the future, his face sinks.

Yakov Altunyan gazes out at the vineyards of Hadrut

“A person starts from scratch again, several times in his life, and it is not bad, but we must unite again, rediscover ourselves, first as a nation, as a state. To start again, it is necessary to give Artsakh status and security guarantees. I am ready to become the first settler in liberated Hadrut, but now it is not realistic. It is only a great wish and dream. I do not have a house. The most important thing for me is to be attached to the ground, to plant a garden. That was my way of life. Now I do not know where my house and garden will be. But if I receive support, I am ready to go back and re-establish my house and vineyard in a handful of villages in Artsakh, and if that is not possible, to live and create in another part of Armenia,” Altunyan says.

Since the Weekly’s meeting with Altunyan, he and his family have moved back to Stepanakert to an apartment provided by the government. Officials have also promised him a home in a rural area where Altunyan hopes to once again have a vineyard and produce Artsakh wine. 

Armenian PM Nikol Pashinyan, European Council President Charles Michel and Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev in Brussels (RA Government, April 6)

In recent months, some positive momentum was registered in Armenia-Azerbaijan talks. The sides established national commissions on border delimitation and demarcation, and after a six-month break, the trilateral Armenia-Russia-Azerbaijan commission on restoration of communication resumed its work. According to Russian sources, later confirmed by the Armenian deputy prime minister, the sides achieved significant progress in the negotiations, almost reaching an agreement on the route of the highway, which will connect Azerbaijan with Nakhichevan via the Syunik region of Armenia, as well as on modalities of border and customs control. The agreement to open the Armenia-Turkey land border for the crossing of third country citizens and launch direct air cargo trade between the two countries, achieved during the July 1 meeting of Armenia and Turkey representatives, seemed to add a more positive environment in the South Caucasus geopolitics.

In the light of these developments, some may question the title of this paper, arguing that Armenia and Azerbaijan are moving toward peace, and the possibility of a new war is quite remote and improbable. However, the situation is not as rosy as it may seem. The core reason for the conflict, the final status of Nagorno Karabakh, continues to remain unresolved. In this context, the situation is now worse than before the 2020 Karabakh war. During the 26 years of negotiations separating the first and the second Karabakh wars under the auspices of the OSCE Minsk Group, Armenia and Azerbaijan agreed that there was Nagorno Karabakh which should have status. The contradiction was about the nature of that status. Azerbaijan expressed readiness to provide the highest possible level of autonomy within Azerbaijan. At the same time, Armenia and authorities of the Nagorno Karabakh Republic rejected any possibility of Karabakh being under Azerbaijani control, claiming that the only solution was the recognition of Nagorno Karabakh’s independence by Azerbaijan. 

We face a different reality after the 2020 Artsakh War. Azerbaijan claims that there is no Nagorno Karabakh anymore; therefore, Azerbaijan will not discuss the status of a non-existent entity with anyone, be it Armenia, Russia or the OSCE Minsk Group. The Armenian government claims that Nagorno Karabakh exists, and the rights of Nagorno Karabakh Armenians, as well as the final status of the region which should derive from those rights, should be negotiated within the OSCE Minsk Group. Armenian authorities hinted that theoretically, they might agree to the broad autonomy for Nagorno Karabakh within Azerbaijan under solid international guarantees, including the permanent deployment of the peacekeeping mission. The authorities of Nagorno Karabakh Republic state that any status within Azerbaijan is unacceptable for them, as it cannot guarantee the rights of Armenians and will force Armenians to leave their homeland. 

Russia and the West agree that Nagorno Karabakh exists and that its status should be decided, but this is the only area where they have overlapping views. From an American and European perspective, the only realistic way to move forward is to agree on some autonomy for Nagorno Karabakh within Azerbaijan, with guarantees that Armenians will continue to live there. Meanwhile, the agreement between Armenia and Azerbaijan on the status of Nagorno Karabakh will pave the way for Azerbaijan, the EU and the US to demand the withdrawal of Russian peacekeepers from Nagorno Karabakh after November 2025. After the complete rupture of Russia-West relations due to the war in Ukraine, the withdrawal of Russian peacekeepers from Nagorno Karabakh is part of the renewed US strategy to contain Russia and weaken Russian positions in the post-Soviet world. 

Meanwhile, Russia calls on Armenia and Azerbaijan to concentrate on the issues of restoration of communications and border delimitation and demarcation and postpone the decision on the future status of Nagorno Karabakh, as no compromise is realistic now. No agreement between Armenia and Azerbaijan on Nagorno Karabakh will ensure that Russian peacekeepers will remain in Nagorno Karabakh, as even the West understands that in those circumstances, the withdrawal of the Russian peacekeepers will open the way for ethnic cleansing. 

There is no clarity about the future of the OSCE Minsk Group. After the start of the war in Ukraine, Russia claimed that the US and France decided not to cooperate with Russia in this format, thus effectively killing it. During her recent visit to Yerevan, the US Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Karen Donfried stated that despite the war in Ukraine, the US was ready to work with Russia within the OSCE Minsk Group. However, the Minsk Group co-chairs issued their last joint statement in December 2021. Regardless of the reasons, the co-chairs have ceased their activities since then.

Meanwhile, Azerbaijani authorities, including President Aliyev, claim that if Armenia does not drop its demands to discuss the future status of Nagorno Karabakh, then Azerbaijan will demand autonomy for Azerbaijanis in the Syunik region of Armenia. As there is no Azerbaijani population in Syunik, this statement is an indirect threat to invade Syunik. The region is the only land area separating Azerbaijan from Nakhichevan. After the 2020 Karabakh war, Azerbaijani authorities increased their rhetoric about Syunik being a historical Azerbaijani land, which artificially divided the Turkic world, spanning from Istanbul to the Kazakhstan-China border. 

Thus, despite the recent positive developments on the Armenia-Turkey track and the issues related to the restoration of communications, the core issue of the conflict continues to divide Armenia and Azerbaijan. As any quick compromise on the status of Nagorno Karabakh is unlikely, the international community should focus on preventing a new war rather than changing the status quo that emerged after the 2020 Karabakh war. In this context, confidence-building measures may play a vital role, and all sides should welcome the recent EU initiatives in this direction.