The Sotk mine, which employs more than 700 people and is located on the volatile border with Azerbaijan, was seriously affected by an upsurge in skirmishes between Armenian and Azerbaijani forces in mid-April. Its employees say that they have since repeatedly come under fire and been evacuated after trying to return to work.
In a statement issued last week, the Russian-owned company GPM Gold operating the mine announced that due to the continuing gunfire it has decided to “stop the operation of the open-pit mine” and put many of its workers on unpaid leave.
“We all knew that the open-pit section of the Sotk mine is going to be closed in the coming months,” said Karen Sargsian, the governor of Armenia’s Geghakunik province encompassing Sotk. “But due to the recent security problems its operations there were halted [earlier than planned.] But the operations continue at the underground section.”
“The Sotk mine is partially working,” Sargsian told journalists in Yerevan. He did not say how many GPM Gold workers have retained their jobs.
The GPM Gold statement said nothing about the switch to underground mining at Sotk which was predicted by an Armenian deputy minister of local government and infrastructures earlier in May.
The company, which is part of Russia’s GeoProMining metals group, had already lost control over a large part of the mountainous area’s gold deposits following the 2020 war in Nagorno-Karabakh and the resulting Armenian withdrawal from the Kelbajar district bordering Sotk. This appears to explain why total taxes paid by it plummeted from 20.8 billion drams ($53 million) in 2021 to just 3.2 billion drams in 2022.