Driving his Lada towards our home, the commander apologized for having come to an abrupt stop. “I was wounded in the battle of Shushi,” he said. “And after that, in Lachin. I was hit by grad missiles. Lost my right leg, or most of it. They even sent me to America for treatment, which only partly helped.

“I have just one comment about the meeting in Moscow. I expect nothing good from this meeting, or whatever follows. When it comes to Russia and the Russians, we’ve always come up on the short end. And another thing. If we end up giving up the territories, and letting Azeris back in to the territories and Karabagh, everything is lost. If not today, then tomorrow. At that point, I’ll leave Armenia. I won’t be able to live here, in this nation of cowards. Sure, we have some brave warriors, but that’s not enough. The average person is only concerned about his family and his job. There comes a time when a person has to sacrifice himself for his nation.”

The commander continued his thoughts, now about the Dashnak party: “I sincerely think the Dashnak party was created by the Turks or some other outside party, as a tool to destroy Armenia. They talk well, but their deeds are otherwise. I can tell stories about what I saw in Karabagh. Simple stories like when they passed out good cigarettes, during battle, and gave them only to Dashnak party members. We were all Armenian, and fighting for the homeland. What Dashnak, what party? And when they were passing out twenty-dollar bills to people there if they joined the party. And, even worse, the day I came across a fighter, a real fighter, one who had fought in Afghanistan, and was fighting in Karabagh, near Shushi, and I discovered lying there wounded, his shoes and socks torn, and his feet freezing…he might have frozen to death if I hadn’t found him. I went to the Dashnak party office and asked them to give the fighter some new socks and shoes. And what did they answer? ‘If he joins the party, we’ll give him new shoes.’”