Anna Hakobyan, the wife of Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, announced on Tuesday that she has begun military training and will soon join the Armenian forces fighting against Azerbaijan in the highly-contested Nagorno-Karabakh region.
In a post shared on Facebook, 42-year-old Hakobyan said that a 13-member women’s squad, including herself, will soon begin military training exercises, AFP reported.
“In a few days we will depart to assist with the protection of our borders,” the post read. “Neither our homeland nor our dignity will be surrendered to the enemy.”
This will be her second military training course since the resurgence of tension between Armenia and Azerbaijan. Just last month, Hakobyan and a group of women from Karabakh underwent a seven-day combat training course at a military base, where they learnt how to use arms and ammunition, AFP reported.
The most recent outburst of fighting between the two warring nations broke out in September, and has killed more than a thousand people so far. Three ceasefire agreements, attempted separately by Russia and the United States, have failed to take affect as tensions continue to escalate in the region.
Earlier this month, Hakobyan, the chief editor of the Armenian Times newspaper, sent a letter to the First Ladies of the US, Canda, France, Brazil, Lebanon, Singapore, Lithuania, Argentina and Vietnam, urging them to “recognize the independence of Nagorno-Karabakh, the civilian population of which is being attacked by Azerbaijan”.
Her 20-year-old son Ashot Pashinyan has also volunteered to fight against Azeri forces in Karabakh, AFP reported.