Armen Markosyan has been pacing up and down the corridors of Moscow's Domodedovo airport for three days now. 

He’s waiting for a special flight, organized by the Moscow Armenian Embassy, to return seasonal workers like him to Armenia.

Markosyan left for Russia to fix elevators, and now finds himself stranded in the Russian capital.

"The number has shot up in last two or three days. There’s already 120 people at the airport. They do not want to go to a hotel. They say they'll sleep on the ground and on benches, just so long as they get flights back home to their families,” Markosyan told Hetq.

While the embassy offered hotel accommodations to Markosyan and the others, they refused.  

He says that hotel conditions aren’t good, adding that if they stay at a hotel there’d be no pressure to organize flights to Armenia. He says that more than sixty Armenians have been put up in Moscow hotels.

"If we go to a hotel, we will stay here longer. There will be no flights for us. Here, at least people assemble, and get their voices heard on TV. Planes are allocated and people go to Armenia,” Markosyan says.

He says that the embassy staffers said that there would be no special flight until Sunday. A flight might be arranged afterwards, if some 200 passengers are found to be waiting.

Markosyan says the embassy told him to stay with friends until a flight is arranged. While he has friends in Moscow, Markosyan doesn’t want to risk infecting them or getting infected himself.

Arayik Yeghiazaryan is another seasonal worker waiting at the airport for a flight to Armenia. He also works in Moscow repairing elevators. 

He called the embassy’s hotline this morning and was told the same thing - no flight until Sunday the earliest.

“I told them the ambassador should do something because there are 130 people waiting for days at the airport,” Yeghiazaryan says.

"Embassy staffers told me they’d get me a job if I didn’t have one. They also offered a hotel room. All of Moscow is closed, quarantined. I’m not allowed to work. It's not like I'm homeless. I just want to go home,” he says.

Yeghiazaryan says he and the others only want the embassy to arrange a flight back home, nothing more.

Yesterday, the Armenian Embassy in Russia, responding to a Facebook inquiry, said that no flights to Armenia are planned soon.

The embassy also posted that it could get jobs for those who had left to work in Russia.

 "The Embassy continues to make every effort to aid citizens of Armenia who arrived in Russia for work and lost their jobs due to the situation and found themselves in a difficulty. Individuals and groups in need of construction work can send their data to ․ [email protected],” the embassy’s post reads,.

Photos were taken today at Domodedovo Airport