World champion boxer Vakhtang "Vic" Darchinyan, in a Facebook post, has urged fellow athletes around the world to protest the continued Azerbaijani imprisonment of Armenian captives.

Darchinyan writes:

My country has a lot of serious problems nowadays and the most essential of them is getting our captives back to their motherland.

I appeal to all the athletes of the world not to be indifferent and join my call for making Azerbaijani government to return our Armenian captives, who are being held like prisoners.

The war is over. Thousands of people have died, thousands of families are grieving, but there are soldiers who have survived and can still return home. I’m asking you to speak up, so that our Armenian captives are no longer locked up in Azerbaijan.

Your friend, nine-time world champion,

Vic Darchinyan