HY RU EN
Asset 3

Loading

End of content No more pages to load

Your search did not match any articles

Yeranuhi Soghoyan

Vladimir Killed in Artsakh: Hadn’t Seen His Only Brother Samvel in Three Years

20 year-old Vladimir Melkonyan had three months of army service left. He never made it home.

Melkonyan, the youngest son in the Gyumri family, was killed on April 1 in the recent round of fighting in Artsakh.

Vladimir’s father, a volunteer who participated in the 1990s Artsakh War, died from diabetes in 1998. Svetlana, Vladimir’s mother, said her husband’s illness was a result of the war.

The Melkonyans live in a section of a two-story building in the railroad part of Gyumri. Vladimir’s older brother Samvel got out of the army last year after serving in Idjevan, in Armenia, along the border with Azerbaijan. The two brothers hadn’t seen one another in three years. After getting discharged, Samvel went abroad to find work. He wanted to make some money to welcome home Vladimir in style.

“He had been away for two months. But when he heard the news, Samvel rushed back,” said Svetlana. “We didn’t want Vladimir to go to the front but he wanted to serve in Karabakh.”

The government has allowed the family to add an adjacent unused room to the two rooms they now have. The twenty square meter space is in need of repair. So is the entire apartment. The family doesn’t have the resources to renovate the apartment.

Svetlana, 45, doesn’t work. The family gets by on the pensions received by the grandparents. The regional government allocated the family 60,000 AMD ($125) in a one-time assistance payment. The regional government has also promised to assist Samvel in taking extension courses at the Gyumri branch of the Yerevan Engineering Institute.

On April 17, the family received $500 that had been raised by the Armenian community in Belgium.

The money was transferred to the family by Mher Margaryan, a Yerevan surgeon, and Anoush Kocharyan. Margaryan says he and his colleagues will help the family if they have any medical needs.

Margaryan and Kocharyan traveled to Artsakh that same day and visited the wife and family of Lieutenant Colonel Aleksandr Arakelyan, who was killed in the fighting.

They gave the family $500 that had been raised by the Belgian-Armenian community.

Comments (9)

Alek
Can hetq provide Samvel's contact info?
Aram
I trust Hetq more than other sources of information, and I think, I'm not only one. Could you provide me Samvel's family contact information, or take a responsibility by opening a bank account to support families like Samvrl's. Thank you.
nina
I think Ani's comments are prejudice but she has a point. Armenians are not lazy but rather very hard working people. Raising one time funds is not sustainable means of financial independence. Don't feed them fish, but rather teach them how to fish. If Ani was so kind and caring, she and many alike could start a project raising funds to help these people grow their own food and perhaps even start farming. Attacking each other is destructive but providing valuable and pragmatic solutions to help them get out of this mess is constructive. Today, no one will come to the rescue of Armenia. The world was quite in 1915, in Sumgait, today, and will be silent tomorrow as well. If we do not come together, we will be destroyed.
Sergey
077524644 Samvel. + 37477524644
Talar
Please provide contact info for the family in order to offer them assistance.
Alek
Come on Hetq! Please provide Samvel's contact info. If you can not publish it on the website, please email it to: [email protected] or [email protected] Thanks
Alek
Ani, I strongly suggest that before you make any comments about this family (or similar families in Armenia), try to understand the situation that they live in.
ani
Svetlana's and Samvel's duty is to work; they live in countryside and not even plant a vegetable garden to have healthy natural basic food ; e few hens ,ducks and rabbits are also easy to hold. I saw tooo many armenians,who are too lazy and week of character to do simple work ! Sorry, but it's true. PS: of course, this comment will not be published ..
arthur trevelyan
The way this Armenian family is living is a DISGRACE. Come on people, why some of us live in Mansions and the majority rest in huts? Does Serzh Sarkissian know about the economic and dismal living conditions of this brave family, who sacrificed their son so that the Rich Untouchable Greedy oligarchs can live in safety and make more money?

Write a comment

Hetq does not publish comments containing offensive language or personal attacks. Please criticize content, not people. And please use "real" names, not monikers. Thanks again for following Hetq.
If you found a typo you can notify us by selecting the text area and pressing CTRL+Enter