They said all their applications to other instances, including the office of Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian and the Defense Ministry, have so far been unanswered.
“Their only answer is that we should wait while relevant work is being done. But 10 months have passed. We don’t see any results of this work. Can anyone tell me where my son is?” a disgruntled woman said.
Another woman whose son is among missing soldiers claimed that according to the information they had, all officers except one had deserted, leaving the rank and file alone.
“Only one officer remained with his soldiers till the end and his fate today is also unknown. We’ve tried to learn about what happened as much as possible. Preliminary investigation is currently underway, people have been interrogated as part of a criminal case,” she said.
The parents of missing soldiers said that being dissatisfied with the work of government bodies they decided to make their own inquires, talk to other servicemen from the military unit where their sons served and collect other facts. They said that the bodies of nine of the 21 servicemen missing from that military unit were found after being spotted on videos disseminated by Azerbaijanis on social media – eight of the bodies were identified, while one could not be identified.
“Now I pray and ask God for a no-match [in DNA] to have even a glimmer of hope that my son may still be alive, even if he is in captivity. Captivity is a very bad thing, but at least there is a hope that one day he may come back home and knock at my door,” another woman said.
The parents of missing soldiers eventually were received by Director of the National Security Service Armen Abazian. After the meeting that lasted for about two hours they said that they had agreed that a more in-depth investigation would be conducted based on the additional information that they had provided and that reports on the work done would be presented to them on a regular basis through other meetings to be organized in the near future.
In June, the Armenian government said that the number of people who remained unaccounted for after the 2020 war in Nagorno-Karabakh stood at 275.