Prisoners of War and Peace: The Fight for Freedom From Baku

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A video circulating on Telegram* shows Armenian soldiers blindfolded, beaten and screaming in pain as Azerbaijani fighters kick them and pierce their skin with what appears to be a metal skewer. For Hranush Mkrtchyan, it’s how she learns her husband, Lyudvig, previously declared dead in combat, is still alive.

The 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh War between Armenia and Azerbaijan broke out on September 27, following decades of unresolved conflict, periodic escalations and persistent ceasefire violations on the front line. By October 10, Lyudvig disappeared. Armenian search and rescue teams returned empty-handed, and authorities told Hranush he was likely killed in an explosion — leaving behind no body and no answers.

Soon after, videos began surfacing on Azerbaijani Telegram channels, showing captured Armenian fighters.

“When I saw the video, I fainted,” recalls Hranush, breaking into tears. Her then-12-year-old son and 17-year-old daughter collapsed on the kitchen floor, screaming, she says, describing the day the footage appeared. “After that, the most brutal part begins,” she adds, referring to what has become a nearly six-year-long fight to have Lyudvig released from Azerbaijan.

For over five years, the Mkrtchyan family, with their lawyers, have continued to press international organizations, the United States, and the Armenian government to compel Azerbaijan to free Lyudvig and the other then-22 known Armenian prisoners of war — soldiers, civilians and former government officials.

In the wake of a devastating three-and-a-half decade conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan, a normalization deal meant to bring peace to the South Caucasus finally came in early August 2025. In January 2026, four prisoners were released while the remaining 19, including Lyudvig, are serving prison sentences in Azerbaijan. While exchanges of gunfire have fallen silent, for the Mkrtchyans, the fighting hasn’t stopped.

The dispute between Armenia and Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh dates back to the 1920s, when the Soviet Union created an autonomous region within Azerbaijan, populated predominantly by ethnic Armenians. In 1989, following the weakening of Soviet control, Nagorno-Karabakh, known as Artsakh to Armenians, voted to secede from Azerbaijan. This sparked mass violence in what would become known as the First Nagorno-Karabakh War between the two former Soviet nations in 1988.

By the time a Russian-brokered ceasefire was signed in 1994, ethnic Armenian forces controlled Nagorno-Karabakh and several surrounding Azerbaijani districts. The fighting displaced hundreds of thousands of people, with Azerbaijanis fleeing the Armenian captured territories and Armenians fleeing parts of Azerbaijan.

For the next two decades, Nagorno-Karabakh functioned as a de facto Armenian-controlled region with its own government and military, backed by Armenia but unrecognized internationally. Azerbaijan viewed the territory as occupied and vowed to retake it, while the international community continued to recognize it as part of Azerbaijan’s sovereign territory.

The 2020 war lasted only six weeks. Azerbaijan gained a decisive advantage through advanced drone warfare and strong backing from allies like Turkiyë, resulting in a Russia-brokered ceasefire that left large swaths of the Armenia-backed Nagorno-Karabakh under Azerbaijani control. However, parts of Nagorno-Karabakh remained governed by Armenian authorities.

To apply pressure and eventually regain complete control of the region, Azerbaijan blockaded the Lachin Corridor in 2022—the only route connecting Nagorno-Karabakh to Armenia—severely restricting the flow of food, fuel and medicine. This culminated with a large-scale military offensive in September 2023, which led to the collapse of the republic and the forced displacement of ethnic Armenians. In the aftermath of the humanitarian crisis, some in the international community characterized the events as an ethnic cleansing—a claim Azerbaijan resolutely denies. 

As the conflict escalated, Lyudvig’s case moved from the battlefield to a Baku courtroom. He was captured in Hadrut, a town in Nagorno-Karabakh, on October 10, 2020. Less than a year later, in August 2021, he was convicted and sentenced to 20 years on charges of alleged “torture and cruel treatment” against Azerbaijanis during the First Nagorno-Karabakh War in the late 1980s—accusations that Hranush says are false.

She recalls begging Lyudvig not to go to the frontlines. Decades of conflict with Azerbaijan already filled Yerablur Military Cemetery in Yerevan with generations of fallen Armenian men. But when Azerbaijan launched a full-scale offensive to take control of Nagorno-Karabakh, Lyudvig, she says, felt called to serve his country.

As videos appearing to show Lyudvig captured and tortured spread online, his family searched desperately for answers. Hranush rushed to Armenia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, where she says she was told there was nothing they could do to confirm if he was alive in Azerbaijan. She turned to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), pleading for information.

The ICRC confirmed Lyudvig was alive. Hranush walked to her church in tears, still in her house robe and slippers, thanking God that her husband survived.

When Lyudvig was found alive in Azerbaijan in 2020, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and several human rights organizations met with Hranush and families of the prisoners. But “the more time passed, the less they listened to us,” she says. Hranush wrote a letter to the Prime Minister requesting a meeting, an ask allegedly still unanswered over a year later.

“They tell us it will be okay, be patient, endure… but we have been hearing those same words for five years,” says Hranush.

Hranush’s pain is compounded by her severe rheumatoid arthritis that often leaves her unable to move and with difficulty sleeping. Doctors visited regularly in the nights that followed Lyudvig’s disappearance, giving her injections to try to calm her and force her to sleep. On some of the nights that she lies awake, she lays on the floor.

“Lyudvig might be sleeping on the floor,” she says. “How could I sleep in a bed?”

Siranush Sahakyan is an Armenian international human rights lawyer representing the now 19 prisoners of war at the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), including Lyudvig. According to Sahakyan, families allege torture inside of Baku’s prisons, subjecting detainees to humiliation and degrading treatment, allegedly forcing them to act like dogs, prohibiting them from having Christian symbols, or forcing them to read propaganda materials.

While human rights abuses inside Baku’s prisons are well-documented, the Mkrtchyan family and the families of the prisoners of war and detainees remain in the dark about the health conditions of their loved ones.

After the 2023 ethnic cleansing, the Armenian prisoners of war became increasingly cut off from the outside world. The ICRC—the only organization previously permitted by Azerbaijan to check on the health and treatment of the prisoners—made its last visit in June 2025, with only limited access permitted. By September 2025, Azerbaijan completely suspended the ICRC’s access altogether. The decision allegedly came following undisclosed discussions with the government of Azerbaijan. With no international monitors able to see the prisoners or report back to families, Sahakyan says their conditions will only worsen, with no way to verify their safety or wellbeing.

Azerbaijan forbids journalists or foreign lawyers from visiting the prisons. Contact between Hranush and Lyudvig is sparse, only permitted for occasional phone calls and letters. Azerbaijan assigns lawyers from the state to represent Armenian cases in court. According to Sahakyan, she was refused access to see her clients in Baku. Allegedly, prisoners are held in isolation, with no family nor Armenian legal visitation, and as she says, no access to “torture-preventing mechanisms.”

Hranush described her husband’s treatment as so severe that in a letter from Lyudvig to her family, she could not recognize his handwriting. The ICRC later told her, allegedly, his hands were so badly beaten, he couldn’t hold a pen.

“Every day the prisoners remain in jail is a defeat,” says Jared Genser, an American international human rights lawyer who has freed over 341 prisoners from 20 countries, including pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi in Myanmar and anti-Apartheid leader Desmond Tutu in South Africa. “The international community has failed the Armenian political prisoners,” he says.

Genser solely represents Ruben Vardanyan, former State Minister of Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh) and ex-Russian billionaire oligarch. Vardanyan is one of the several former state leaders among the prisoners of war. While only legally representing Vardanyan, Genser was directed by his client to advocate on behalf of all of the prisoners of war, while supporting negotiations with the U.S.

“We had been pushing very hard for the release at the same time as, or before, the [August 2025 normalization] deal, […] but we obviously weren’t able to achieve that,” says Genser. “That’s disappointing and frustrating, but it’s important that the President of the United States has said publicly that [the release of the prisoners] is a top priority.”

In Washington during talks between Armenia, Azerbaijan, and the United States, President Donald Trump spoke directly to Prime Minister Pashinyan about the release of the prisoners of war. “Are you talking about the 23 Christians? I’m going to ask them to do that,” says Trump, referring to Azerbaijani President, Ilham Aliyev. “I think they will do it for me. This is important, isn’t it?”

The normalization deal signed eight months ago ushered in the latest prospect of lasting peace for the South Caucasus. However, Sahakyan says simply, without the release of the prisoners of war, “the deal is not enough.”

For the remaining 19 prisoners of war and their families, peace has yet to arrive. The wait, Hranush describes, is unbearable. What began as international assurances, has devolved into years of pleading to be heard as peace proceeds without them. For the Mkrtchyans, the fear is no longer that Lyudvig’s release is delayed, but that his captivity is only just beginning.

“I lay down and imagine that he has come [home] and how we would welcome him,” says Hranush. “A minute later, I realize that it’s not real. And everything is shattered again.”

*The Editorial team has viewed the videos, but has chosen not to share them.

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