Before the 2020 Artsakh war, cheesemaker Vardan Shakhanumyan would make a weekly early morning car trip from his home in the village of Verishen, outside Goris in Armenia, to Artsakh to buy milk.

He especially liked the milk made by residents of Vorotan and Kovsakan in Artsakh’s Kashatagh District.

The war abruptly changed his work routine.

52-year-old Vardan Shakhanumyan has been making cheese for thirty years.

He first worked at the Goris state cheese factory, now privatized. He then opened a cheese factory in Verishen with his neighbors. After the plant closed, Shakhanumyan took out a bank loan in 2018, turned the first floor of his house into a cheese workshop, and started making cheese with his wife.

When Azerbaijan attacked Artsakh in the fall of 2020, Shakhanumyan donated cheese to Artsakh Armenians who fled to Goris. He also volunteered to serve in a local defense force.

He recalls November 9, 2020, the day Armenia signed a ceasefire with Azerbaijan, with sadness. "There was only crying that day," he says.

The Shakhanumyan family stayed in Verishen during the war, despite the sound of Azerbaijani drones.   

After the war, Mr. Shakhanumyan became a contract soldier in the Armenian army. He spends two weeks in combat positions and two weeks at home. During the war, cheese production stopped, but a year and a half later, the family decided to restart it.

"After the war, there was neither money nor strength for cheese making," Mr. Shakhanumyan tells Hetq.

When asked why he decided to enter military service, Mr. Shakhanumyan says he wanted to assist his country in some manner.

As we talk, a woman and a young man call out from the gate, placing containers full of milk in the yard. He no longer drives to area villages to buy milk for his cheese. Villagers bring it to him, and he only buys milk from cows grazing on mountain pastures.

Shakhanumyan’s cheese is sold in Goris and Yerevan.

He admits it’s tough competing with the big cheesemakers. His products, bearing no brand name or packaging, make the rounds by word of mouth. The cheese sells itself given its quality and flavor.

“You have to taste by Chanakh cheese, in the saltwater brine, to understand,” he says.

Verishen has about 200 hectares of pasture near ​​Sev Litch (Black Lake), where Azerbaijani troops still occupy several surrounding strategic heights.

Mr. Shakhanumyan says villagers fear taking their livestock to the area to graze. This fear is shared by many living in Armenia’s southern Syunik Province which now shares a border with Azerbaijan.

He faults the government in Yerevan for being overly timid when it comes to protecting Armenia’s borders. He rules out any idea of granting Baku a corridor connecting Nakhijevan with Azerbaijan proper through Syunik.

Mr. Shakhanumyan does not differentiate between former and current governments when it comes to assigning responsibility for Armenia’s recent setbacks.

“For me, there is a motherland, the nation. The people must live by a national ideology so as not to lose their homeland. We should think about saving the nation. We all must rethink our approach to survive as a people.”

Photos by Lusine Hakobyan