Nagorno-Karabakh: "I am a chef, but I am also a good warrior"
An instructor helps a volunteer shoot a sniper rifle in Nagorno-Karabakh on October 27, 2020 (illustration).
AP Photo
Text by: RFI Follow
3 min
As the Azerbaijani stranglehold tightens around Nagorno-Karabakh, the Armenians continue to mobilize and refuse to believe in defeat.
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With our special envoys in Yerevan,
Anastasia Becchio
and
Richard Riffonneau
It has been a month since the terrace of Sarkis Matevossian's restaurant, with its breathtaking view of the peeled mountains of the tourist region of Vayots Dzor, has not seen a single visitor pass by.
The activity already slowed down by the Covid-19 epidemic is stopped by the war.
A war that this chef is about to join.
“
For a month now, I have not been able to eat normally, I am not sleeping.
Every second I think about the war.
It's just impossible to work.
People are dying there, how can I continue to work?
I decided that I absolutely had to go.
But I am late.
I should have been there already.
"
"In our character to defend ourselves"
Sarkis will leave with a small team of male and female volunteers.
Some will bake bread, others sew jackets for the soldiers.
He does not yet know what he will do there.
“
I'm a chef, but if I have to, I'm also a good warrior.
I know how to shoot.
"
A month after the outbreak of this new conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh, the noose is tightening around the separatist enclave with an Armenian majority, and in particular the Latchin corridor, the main passageway with Armenia.
Azerbaijani forces are now a few kilometers from the strategic city of Shushi, according to the Nagorno-Karabakh authorities.
This Thursday, the main town in the region, Stepanakert was hit by a massive missile attack lasting several hours.
Civilians were injured.
Despite everything, Sarkis, like many of his fellow citizens, does not believe in defeat.
“
I think it's impossible.
It is in our character to defend ourselves.
Whatever happens, we will defend ourselves.
We will not give up.
Sarkis leaves, thinking of his son.
“
He's 14
,” he says.
And in four years, I don't want him to have to go to war
”.
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Nagorno-Karabakh
Armenia
Azerbaijan