Video: We are not preparing for New Year, I think about what will happen so that the kids can eat: the situation in Artsakh

The displaced Hambardzumyan family, with many children, lives in a small room of a large house in Artsakh. On cold winter evenings, the only wooden stove provides warmth to the home. One of the children points to the distant view of Shushi, saying, 'Look, there's Shushi. Every day a car would come, but now it can't arrive because the Turks have closed the road.'

The mother of five underage children, Karine, shares her struggle: 'We keep two rooms of the house closed; we are all cramped into one room to stay warm. Everything is scarce; there is nothing in the house. Right now, we don’t have any oil, we have no potatoes, the shops are completely empty. In the shop, they wouldn’t give us more than a kilogram of anything, and cigarettes are sold one by one. My mother sent some potatoes from the village; my little girl can’t manage without potatoes. We don’t have any diapers for the baby, we used to go through two packs a month, but now we have none. We don’t have any medicine, either. My husband was a contract soldier, and we had everything, but now we left it all behind and came here. My youngest was just forty days old when we left Shushi.'

In these limited conditions, the family is greatly supported by Karine’s mother, who sends her daughter agricultural produce from her own garden. 'We are not preparing for New Year; right now, I only think about what will happen so that the kids can eat,' says Karine.