14 Days Out of Armenia, Still Not Reached the Checkpoint: Kilometer-Long Lines at Lars

Lars continues to see kilometer-long queues. Armenian drivers report that it has taken them two weeks or more to barely reach the Georgian-Russian border, and now, as they approach the Lars checkpoint, they can only make one kilometer of progress in a day.

"I have been out of Armenia for 14 days already, and I still don’t know if I will reach the checkpoint tomorrow or the next day," said truck driver Arayik in an interview with MediaHub.

According to him, he is transporting frozen fish, and while the products are still usable, there is an expiration date that they must meet; otherwise, the goods will spoil, leaving them with only fuel costs and products that need to be discarded.

"In this cold, we use 60-70 liters of fuel a day to keep the refrigerators running and to warm our cabins so that we don’t freeze. Our daily expenses exceed 50,000 drams, so what are we supposed to do? We spend our days calling the office asking for money," our interlocutor lamented.

He assured that they continuously raise the issue, but no official from the Armenian side responds or seems to take the problem seriously.

"We have a Minister of Economy, we have a tax service—are they even thinking about us? Do they know what is happening here? They say there is a special officer dealing with our issues in Lars, but we haven’t even heard his name. The embassy used to do something in previous years, but now there’s not a peep from them," noted our conversation partner.

Half-jokingly, the driver expressed concern that if this continues, they will spend the New Year at the Lars checkpoint.