Pulling the grenade ring and rejecting Azerbaijanis: The village head of Teg informs details

The head of the Teg community, Nerses Shadunts, shared details with Sputnik Armenia about how villagers found themselves in the area controlled by Azerbaijanis and how they managed to return to the Armenian side.

According to him, the young men involved were born in the years of independence, who, while mowing hay, mistakenly entered approximately 200-300 meters into Azerbaijani-controlled territory while working in the fields.

“They started to mow hay there. Ten armed men descended from the border guards' stronghold and surrounded our boys, telling them that they had entered their territory. They responded, ‘If this is yours, we will turn back,’ to which they replied, ‘No, you will not turn back, we are all going to our designated area together.’ The boys refused. They were being threatened with weapons. One of our boys, who had a grenade nearby, pulled the pin and said, ‘Either we all go together to the other world, or I’m not coming with you,’” Shadunts recounted.

Only after this threat did the Azerbaijanis notify the Armenian side. The village head contacted the commander of the army corps, the commander of the Russian border troops stationed in Syunik, and the commander of the peacekeeping forces, as well as the governor of Syunik.

“After that, we went with the Russians, and they provided a solution to the issue. The youth of the village immediately gathered, we mixed together, and we somehow restrained our emotions so that serious problems would not arise,” Shadunts said.

The current situation in Syunik is compared by the village head to the environment of the early 90s and summarizes it: “The border was 150 kilometers away from here, now it has become 150 meters.”

According to the village head, a serious livestock potential had developed in Teg during these years with 60,000 heads of small cattle, 10,000 heads of large cattle, and thousands of hectares of crop fields. After 2020, the number of small cattle in the community has decreased from 60,000 to about 20,000.

“The economy has regressed three times. There were people who brought hundreds of tons of wheat, cultivated those lands, and there were people who owned their machinery, which they would rent out,” he noted.

It is noteworthy that on June 12, two residents of the village of Teg in Syunik found themselves in Azerbaijani territory. The press service of the Ministry of Defense of Armenia reported that during agricultural work at the border area with Azerbaijan, two residents of the village, due to disorientation in the terrain, ended up in Azerbaijani territory with their tractors. It was reported that shortly after the incident, negotiations between the arriving Armenian defenders and Russian border guards with Azerbaijani military personnel resulted in the villagers being released, and the agricultural machinery was returned.