The Families' Discovery
A video circulating on Telegram shows Armenian soldiers blindfolded, beaten, and screaming in pain as Azerbaijani fighters kick them and pierce their skin with what appears to be a metal skewer. For Hranush Mkrtchyan, it is how she learns that her husband, Lyudvig -- previously declared dead in combat -- is still alive.
The 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh War between Armenia and Azerbaijan broke out on September 27, following decades of unresolved conflict, periodic escalations, and persistent ceasefire violations on the front line. By October 10, Lyudvig disappeared. Armenian search-and-rescue teams returned empty-handed, and authorities told Hranush he was likely killed in an explosion -- leaving behind no body and no answers.
Soon after, videos began surfacing on Azerbaijani Telegram channels showing captured Armenian fighters. "When I saw the video, I fainted," Hranush recalls, breaking into tears. Her then-12-year-old son and 17-year-old daughter collapsed on the kitchen floor, screaming. The discovery -- learning through a video of torture that a family member declared dead is in fact alive and held captive -- is the specific, recurring trauma that the POW-and-missing-persons legacy of the 2020 war has imposed on Armenian families.
The POW and Missing-Persons Legacy
The 2020 war's POW-and-missing-persons legacy is one of the most painful unresolved dimensions of the post-war Armenian environment. The war produced: Armenian prisoners of war captured by Azerbaijani forces; Armenian soldiers and civilians missing in action with no confirmed status; the families left without confirmed information about whether their relatives are dead, captive, or missing. The November 2020 ceasefire arrangement included POW-exchange provisions, but the implementation has been contested, with Armenian-side claims that not all POWs have been returned and that some have been held under various legal-and-procedural pretexts.
The Azerbaijani-side legal architecture has, in multiple documented cases, processed captured Armenian fighters through Azerbaijani criminal proceedings -- charging them with offences under Azerbaijani law and producing convictions that convert the POW status into the criminal-detention status. This architecture has been one of the principal mechanisms through which the POW return has been delayed or contested, with the Armenian-side and international-human-rights-organisation position that the proceedings violate the international-humanitarian-law framework governing POW treatment.
For the families, the legacy is a sustained ordeal. The uncertainty -- not knowing whether a relative is dead, captive, or missing -- is, in the comparative trauma-studies literature, one of the most psychologically-damaging forms of loss precisely because it forecloses the grieving-and-resolution process. The Telegram-video discovery mechanism, in which families learn of survivors through circulated torture footage, adds the specific trauma of witnessing the relative's suffering to the broader uncertainty.
The Peace-Versus-Justice Tension
The POW-and-missing-persons accountability question stands at the center of the peace-versus-justice tension that OWL has documented across the May 2026 cycle. The post-2025 Washington Declaration framework, moving toward a final peace treaty, would require Armenia and Azerbaijan to terminate their interstate cases before forums such as the International Court of Justice and the European Court of Human Rights within a month of the agreement's entry into force, and to refrain from initiating any new cases thereafter (OWL's May 25 "Politics of Silence" investigation documented this drop-the-cases requirement).
The structural problem the drop-the-cases requirement creates for the POW-and-missing-persons accountability: the international-court cases are one of the principal formal mechanisms through which Armenia has pursued accountability for the treatment of POWs and the resolution of the missing-persons cases. The termination of those cases as part of the peace framework would foreclose the formal-accountability avenue precisely as the POW-and-missing-persons cases remain unresolved.
The "Politics of Silence" analysis framed the broader concern: "peace through amnesia" -- a peace purchased at the cost of the accountability-and-recognition framework. The POW-and-missing-persons cases are the most concrete, human dimension of this concern. For families like Hranush Mkrtchyan's, the termination of the international-court cases would remove one of the formal mechanisms through which the return of their relatives -- or the confirmation of their fate -- has been pursued. The peace-versus-justice tension is, for these families, not abstract: it is the question of whether the peace framework includes or forecloses the resolution of their relatives' cases.
The Transitional-Justice-Mechanism Question
The POW-and-missing-persons accountability question reinforces the transitional-justice-mechanism urgency that OWL documented in the "Politics of Silence" investigation. The argument: if the formal international-court accountability avenues are being foreclosed as part of the peace framework, then some substitute transitional-justice mechanism becomes urgently necessary to ensure that the accountability-and-recognition function the international-court cases performed is not simply eliminated.
For the POW-and-missing-persons cases specifically, a transitional-justice mechanism would need to address: the documentation-and-recognition of the cases (establishing the formal record of the POWs and missing persons); the continued pursuit of the return of survivors and the confirmation of the fate of the missing; the accountability for the documented torture and mistreatment; and the redress-and-support framework for the affected families. Absent such a mechanism, the termination of the international-court cases would leave the POW-and-missing-persons cases without a formal-accountability framework.
The substantive design of any transitional-justice mechanism, and whether the post-cycle Armenian government produces one, is one of the principal post-cycle policy questions. The POW-and-missing-persons families are among the constituencies with the most direct stake in the answer. The peace framework's trajectory, the drop-the-cases requirement's implementation, and the transitional-justice-mechanism question collectively determine whether the families' fight for their relatives' return is sustained or foreclosed by the peace process.
What We Are Watching Next
Three indicators will define the POW-and-missing-persons accountability trajectory. (1) Whether the final peace treaty's drop-the-cases requirement is operationalised without a substitute-accountability framework for the POW-and-missing-persons cases. (2) Whether the post-cycle Armenian government produces a transitional-justice mechanism that addresses the POW-and-missing-persons accountability function. (3) Whether the return of surviving POWs and the confirmation of the fate of the missing persons advances or stalls in the post-cycle period.
The EVN Report POW investigation is one of the substantive Armenian-civil-society engagements with the human dimension of the peace-versus-justice tension. The combination of the families' testimony, the accountability-framework analysis, and the connection to the broader transitional-justice question places this investigation at the center of the cycle's human-cost analytical dimension. OWL covers this content as part of our broader documentary scope of the Armenian post-war accountability environment.
Sources: EVN Report article "Prisoners of War and Peace: The Fight for Freedom From Baku," May 2026, primary source for the Hranush Mkrtchyan family testimony, the Lyudvig Mkrtchyan case, the Telegram-video discovery mechanism, the 2020-war POW-and-missing-persons legacy documentation, and the peace-versus-justice tension framework. OWL companion investigations on the May 25 "Politics of Silence" Artsakh-memory analysis (the Washington Declaration drop-the-cases requirement, the transitional-justice-mechanism urgency), the May 23 Victoria Tevanyan Artsakh-displacement testimony. August 8, 2025 Washington Declaration documentation. Public-record information on the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh War POW-exchange provisions and the international-humanitarian-law POW-treatment framework. All factual claims sourced to the named EVN Report article and the public-record references; OWL editorial framings on the peace-versus-justice tension analysis, the transitional-justice-mechanism analysis, and the watch-list indicators are clearly identified as such.