Haykuhi Stepanyan gave birth to three sons. All three are military. “I was proud that all three of my sons are devoted to the motherland.”
We will tell about the heroic life of Ara Marsel Poghosyan within the framework of ”Immortal Victims of the Artsakh War” series of Iravaban.net.
Ara Poghosyan, or as his relatives say, Aro, studied at “Vazgen Sargsyan” Military Academy. The mother says that her son was respected there as well. The wife, Anna Harutyunyan, recalls with a smile the story of her acquaintance with her beloved husband.
“We have known each other since the 8th grade. Then we moved to Moscow as a family. I didn’t adapt to life there, I asked my parents and came to Armenia to study. It turns out that in fact I was still in Aro’s thoughts. One morning, my sister-in-law and I went to the store, and that day Aro told his friend, “If I see Anna today, it’s my luck, if not; I will not keep on looking for her anymore, because I’ve been looking for her for months.” He himself told me this. He said: “I entered that street for the 5th time and I said, ‘That’s it, this is the last time.’ And he saw me. And this is how we got marries,” the woman recalls.
Ara was serving in Kirovakan during the 2020 war, when he heard the news of the death of his neighbor’s son Edgar Baghumyan, he volunteered and went to Artsakh. “I said: Ara, please don’t go, I cannot support and raise three children. He had also participated in the four-day war, I didn’t have this anxiety, I was proud, I knew that Aro would come home passing throug mountains and valleys. He said: “An, my blood is not more red than theirs and you are a strong woman, even if I do not return, I know that you will take good care of my children. He made his decision and his decision was not discussed. We could not convince him not to go. He said: “I have been a soldier for 20 years, I know what I will do, boys whose age is as much as my work record are being killed, how can I stay in a safe position?”
Ara gathers a group of 10 people and leaves for Berdzor (Lachin). He keeps the borders there for 10-11 days. Then they learn that Berdzor church is surrendered to the enemy. The mother says that her son took that fact very hard. He took 4 of his friends and they went to help, to remove the sacred things from the church, so that they were not left to the enemy and would not be dishonored.
“We met the priest of the church. He told that five people came, helped, we emptied the church. He was supposed to come home on 12 November. The priest told that Aro excitedly said, “If I go home, what should I say, that we had given Shushi, and came?” The priest said that he had taken it very hard; he calmed down Aro quite a bit, talked to them so that they could calm down. The priest told that Aro asked him to allow him to pray in the shrine before leaving, he knelt down and prayed and they left. Half an hour later, they were surrounded. There were 5 of them, and there were many hyenas. They came out of the forest suddenly. I had talked with him an hour before the incident, and I didn’t even ask whether he was hungry or not. I only said, “Bales, be careful of these subversive groups.” He said, “Mom, am I a child? I have been in the military for 20 years.”
A prisoner told us that when he was taken to Shushi, Azerbaijani soldiers came there and told that they fought with 5 boys, that they were very heroic boys. He said that they were boasting that they fought with such strong soldiers. In the end, they said that they killed them. They surrounded the boys, all 5 of them did not raise their hands and surrender, but began fighting with automatic weapons. The doctor that examined the bodies told us that the enemy used grenades, the boys were injured, my son was also wounded in the hand, leg, and his eye was damaged. When they were wounded the enemy came closer, but the boys got into a hand-to-hand fight, this is evidenced by the knife marks on my son, they stabbed him in 5-6 places,” the mother said.
Ara was killed on his wife’s birthday.
Details in the video.
