20-year-old Artsakh war veteran needs support to live in new home

By Mane Berikyan

Twenty-year-old Karen Khlopuzyan, a veteran of the 2020 Artsakh War who lost both of his arms, was gifted a house in Alaverdi, Lori region, nearly a year ago by a member of Hamburg’s Armenian community.

Today, Karen still cannot live in his new home because he requires additional financial support.

The approximately $500 pension he received from the state for his military service is not enough to finance the expenses necessary to make the new home livable. Karen cannot afford to furnish the house or pay to have it connected to the local electricity grid. The latter, for example, costs around $650, more than the sum of his pension alone.

He also needs access to a tractor to develop the 700 square meters of land surrounding his house. However, he has been unable to acquire one in Alaverdi for almost a year.

Karen, who lost both of his arms during an Azerbaijani drone attack in Hadrut, told CivilNet that he no longer has dreams — only goals. Among those, he places special importance on having a furnished house with a beautiful garden where he can start his future family.

Karen had left for his mandatory military service on July 20, 2020, at the age of 18. A soldier of barely two months, he was sent to fight in Hadrut, a region of Nagorno-Karabakh lost to Azerbaijan during the war, where some of the heaviest fighting took place.

He lost his two limbs on October 1, 2020, on the fourth day of the war.

"The first thing I noticed was my hands torn into small pieces by the debris," recalled Karen.

Since then, he has received prosthetics in Yerevan’s Soldier’s Home Rehabilitation Center.

With additional financial support, young Karen can finally be able to live in his new home and pursue the goals he set for himself.