“It so happened that from the very beginning of my deployment to the post, I was assigned as an observer of a Howitzer artillery gun. I am being given coordinates, and we fire accordingly,” Mkrtchyan said.

Speaking about the first day of the Azerbaijani attacks, the soldier said: “On that day we were conducting trainings. A mortar was fired towards our position, it exploded not far from us, naturally, there was panic in the first 10 minutes, and then we received orders to open fire.”

Vladimir Mkrtchyan said that during war operations one can feel the responsibility. “For example, one may deviate very little, but it can result in a 10-15 km deviation. Meaning because of a very little mistake or deviation, one can accidently fire towards friendly positions,” he said.

The soldier presented to BBC their post, their fireplace which keeps them warm, which according to him saves them, because it is very cold during the night. He said that they cannot afford to get a full sleep, because they change shifts every 2 hours.

“Of course, we are facing soldiers of our age, just like us. They are people like us, but during war, there are things that one doesn’t want to think about. One follows orders, because that is the right thing on that particular moment. It doesn’t matter for me that Nagorno Karabakh is an unrecognized republic. We are fighting for our land,” he concluded.