Chief of General Staff of RA Armed Forces receives relatives of  missing and hostages 

ArmInfo.Following the start of yesterday's protest by the relatives of missing servicemen and hostages outside the Ministry of Defense, the latter were offered  a meeting with Deputy Minister and Deputy Chairman of the  Interdepartmental Commission on Prisoners of War, Hostages, and  Missing Persons Arman Sargsyan, and then with the Chief of the  Operational Main Directorate of the General Staff of the RA Armed  Forces - Deputy Chief of the General Staff, Major General Temur  Shahnazaryan.

However, the protesters insisted on meeting with Chief of the General  Staff Edward Asryan and several others, already discharged from the  Armed Forces, as had been previously agreed upon. According to the  press service of the Ministry of Defense, the Chief of the General  Staff of the RA Armed Forces nevertheless received the citizens. The  meeting lasted several hours. The ministry has not released its  results. As a reminder, yesterday a protest by relatives of missing  persons and hostages took place outside the Armenian Ministry of  Defense. The protest was accompanied by a verbal altercation that  escalated into a brawl, as a previously agreed-upon meeting with  Chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces Edward Asryan and  former Commander of the Artsakh Defense Army Kamo Vardanyan was not  fulfilled. Instead, they were offered a meeting with Deputy Defense  Minister Arman Sargsyan, and only two parents were allowed in. This  response did not satisfy the assembled relatives, who blocked the  entrance to the Ministry.  Due to the situation, police forces were  deployed at the gates of the Ministry of Defense administrative  complex.

The protest took place because, after five years, the state has  achieved no results in the search for and release of servicemen  missing after the 44-day Artsakh War, as well as those taken hostage  in Azerbaijan.  As the servicemen's parents noted, they do not  believe that the Armenian authorities are actually taking any action  to clarify the fate of their relatives.

It is worth noting that the exact number of Armenian prisoners of war  and hostages held in Azerbaijani prisons remains unknown. According  to the latest data from the International Committee of the Red Cross  (ICRC) as of August 2024, approximately 1,000 people are considered  missing on the Armenian side, with approximately 300 of these  individuals being reported missing following the latest escalation in  the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict zone between autumn 2020 and autumn  2023. Moreover, all data was collected by the ICRC based on requests  from the families of the missing. The ICRC also reported that among  these 300, there are several dozen requests concerning cases where  the family disagreed with the DNA data provided by the state.