Harutyun Tilikyan, 22, was drafted into the army in the summer of 2020 after studying at a military college for six years. According to the servicemen, their regiment consisting of 1800 people took part in the war, but only 400-450 people returned from the war. Harutyun was not among the survivors.
The soldier called his family every day. The last call was on September 30. He reassured his parents, saying that he was already in a safe place, he and the other recruits were not in any danger. But it turned out that he was on the front line in Jabrayil.
The parents say that although Harutyun was going to dedicate his whole life to medicine, he had many interests and was constantly trying to learn something new.
“He was a very serious and honest boy. He played violin very well. He was a good athlete, a boxer, he was good chess player,” says his father, David Tilikyan.
“Harutyun loved Armenia, the homeland was sacred to him. I even think he preferred the homeland to us,” said Margo Mkrtchyan, the mother of the killed soldier. She says that until the last moment she hoped that her son was alive and would return.
“One by one we lived through every situation with all the soldiers, we died with the dead, we were wounded with the wounded, we were burned with the burnt, we fought with God… The reality was cruel, very cruel. I prayed to God to find my son somehow. I did not know what was happening. I waited [for him] until the last day, the last hour. “
According to Harutyun’s father, Davit Tilikyan, it is puzzling for him that his son, who has medical knowledge, was appointed by the command as a gunner. “He was recruited on July 16, was quarantined for 14 days, but they took him to the front line… The absurdity is that they took the doctor to fight in the trenches, they took him as an ordinary soldier. There, of course, he helped the wounded, fought, and then a projectile exploded next to him. His friend was injured and he died.”
The father of the killed soldier says that he did not have the opportunity to ask any of his son’s commanders why such a thing was done. “It is said that the frontline soldiers fled, that’s why they took recruits to the frontline. Why did they do such a thing? The recruit does not know how to use a weapon…”
The father is grateful to the soldiers who served with his son, who wrapped and kept his son’s relics. “I am so thankful to them. If they did not do it, we could never have found him. He was brought in on January 30, DNA test confirmed [the relicts’ identity]…There are people trying to give us hope saying that we are not alone, thousands of parents have lost their sons. Those thousands increase our grief a thousand times, it is not a consolation. It is doubly pity; we are doubly sorry for those people.”
Ani Gevorgyan