“Every conscious person who decides to go to war, already mentally says goodbye to life, no matter how optimistic the person is, knows that the probability is very high that he will not return, and it is difficult,” Areg Sardaryan, a participant in the 4 day April war and the 44-day Artsakh war, tells. He was a conscript in 2016.

“During April war, during the fight, we had to pray that it would be foggy so that we could climb to the top of the trench and break the shale,” Areg said.

“It was evening, I just went into the living room and said, ‘Mom, look at me, I’m your son, what do you want your son to be a lion or a jackal?'” Areg said.

According to him, one of the problems in the army is interpersonal relations. “Many officers are not in their position, many soldiers are not in their position.”

According to Areg, most of the people who chose military life are those who could not find themselves in some spheres of life․ “Today in Armenia it is a norm, a person cannot enter into this or that work, and he becomes either a policeman or a military man.”

“When I was serving, we simply did not trust the reservists. When the so-called training camps were held, sometimes, for the reservists, for the most part, it was just a reason to sit down and drink and no one had the leverage to influence those people, the officers did not want to interfere, they said, “It’s their own business, they are not military men. The soldiers stayed away from the conflicts and did their own job,” Areg said.

Details in the video