ON THE “HELICOPTER POSITION”

South-east direction. Morning of April 2. Narek Malkhasyan hits the enemy helicopter Mi-24G by antitank grenade. This episode has divided life, the service of soldiers, serving on the position, into “before” and “after”. It changed also the name of the reference point. Now it is known as “helicopter position”.

“In our reference point the April war was a one-day”

The market price of the helicopter is a few million dollars. Hamlet Sargsyan said that the first helicopter appeared over their position, and they began to shoot. The helicopter crew did not expect this. Then they went to the next position where Narek shot down the helicopter.

Sergeant of the position Aram Muradyan says that two days two bodies of the helicopter crew were in their position, but they did not touch them even with a finger. “For two days we have not slept, waiting for them to come for their bodies, and we were not mistaken. We noticed a group of six commandos. We opened heavy fire and set them back to their starting position.”

The guys say. “In our reference point the April war was a day. We forced them to move back waiting for battle 15 tanks and one more helicopter “, “On that day, we really became soldiers”, “We have changed, we are not the same”, “We realized what means friendship”, and Andranik said that he has decided to go for contract service.

“Savior of the documents”

In the Ministry of Defense, foreign military attaches and journalists get familiarized with the flight documents of the downed Azerbaijani aircraft, which indicate that the four-day military aggression has been pre-planned.

“Savior of the documents” is Sergeant Vahan Stepanyan. When the helicopter crashed, he ran to the flaming machine and pulled out a folder that has been very valuable, there were maps, documents.

Vahan has not yet awarded. When I told him that during the Second World War, it seems for this act a person was given the title of hero, he laughs: “I am not a hero”.

Through the eyes of a stranger

 Representatives of the Lithuanian, Bulgarian and Ukrainian media arrived on the “helicopter position” to see with their own eyes the consequences of military operations unleashed by Azerbaijan.

Reporter of Lithuanian portal Alkas.lt Audris Antanaytis says: “For several years we heard nothing from Artsakh, there were no news. We thought here there is not bad. Now we understand that we had to talk about this, talk a lot and not be silent. At the site we have seen that the term “conflict” is too mildly, here is a real war.”

Journalist of Ukrainian KyivPost Anastasia Vlasova noted that all the soldiers do their work with love, and reporter of Hromadske.tv Jeanne Bespechuk noticed the professionally done engineering work. “I can say only one thing – here is an enormous human pain,” – she said.

Shushan Stepanyan

Photos by Sipan Gyulumyan