Grandma Yepraksia turned 111 a few days ago. She is in a flowery, shiny headscarf, and in a beautiful dress. She is leaning her head on her grandson Arthur’s shoulder and looks at my face with a smirk. Though she looks younger, I still ask.

“Colonel, how is the spread of the new coronavirus prevented in your military unit, what additional sanitary and hygienic measures are being taken?”

Lt Col Rudik Hakobyan inherited his love and devotion to the uniform from his father, Edik Hakobyan, a senior lieutenant of the reserve, who served in the system with impeccable devotion for many years, and fought in the suicide squad during the Artsakh liberation war.

For a moment I forget that I have to see a military doctor. Someone, who served in the border military units, was attacked by saboteurs and rescued soldiers wounded by a sniper’s bullet from the clutches of death.

The training day started in the border military unit in the early morning. It is a shooting drill. The conscripts, under the command of their commanders, spare no effort to refine and improve their firing, strive to hit all targets, and surpass their own results.

They are determined and strong-willed, proud and strong, brave and principled … The girls serving in the Armenian army are like that, they are not inferior to the boys and they serve the homeland equally with them.

Women in epaulettes are not enlisted in the military; they join it only voluntarily.