“An irresponsible, clumsy operation that took our boys to a meat grinder,” Gagik Guyumjyan, the father of fallen hero Aram Guyumjyan, told Aravot Daily, referring to the well-known “Lele Tepe” (Varazatumb) operation. Gagik Guyumjyan said that on September 25, 2020, his son Aram was serving at the Martuni 2 military unit.
According to him, everything was normal during the war. The boys were able to hold their ground. But on October 6, during the famous Lele Tepe operation, all the soldiers were removed from their positions and taken to fight in that operation. The father of the fallen soldier explained, “Aram called and bid us farewell. We also understood where he was going. I asked him who the commander was, and he said they were volunteers. They went, reached Horadiz, and positioned themselves. The tanks from Khojaly should have been ahead of them, but they came late. There are all the recordings of conversations between my son’s fellow soldiers where they say that the shot of an Armenian tank hit a soldier, and Aram was shot from its wave. He died. In other words, our Armenian tank hit our soldiers.
That is their Lele Tepe operation. However, the tank and the intelligence had to go first, then the army. Meanwhile, the opposite happens, and both the October 7 and October 12 operations went wrong. Whoever was saved tried to avoid participating a second time. All recordings are available. Aram, Arthur Manvelyan, and Erik Danielyan were killed in three and a half hours.”
Gagik Guyumjyan responded to the statements that three or four soldiers were killed during the Lele Tepe operation. “There is no such thing. What they described is not true. It is unfortunate that when the Ural military vehicles got there, the volunteers saw the Azeri flags in the first, second and third positions, and even the Karabakh volunteers asked, ‘Where are you taking this?’ The Ural driver said, ‘I’m sorry, but it’s an order, I have to drive.’ Even the commander of Aram’s division ran away. Only the volunteers and soldiers remained.”
Tatev Harutyunyan
