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The British TV channel BBC has made reportage from Nagorno Karabakh Republic. Rayhan Demytrie, the reporter tells about the life of a family living in the village Madagis, not far from the line of contact with Azerbaijan. They live in a constant fear that Azerbaijan may reactivate military operations.

As the article has it, fourteen-year-old Karen hides the stump of his left hand in his pocket. His mother, Ludmila Bagdasaryan-Mirzoyan, says that two years ago Karen found a live anti-aircraft shell in the garden. The relic from the 1990s war with Azerbaijan exploded in his hands. Ludmila often contemplates what the consequences of another war would be.

"If there is another war, we will suffer, my children will suffer. [Azerbaijan's forces] won't care whether we are guilty or not, they will just think that we are Armenians and we have no right to exist," Ludmila says.

According to the reportage, after the collapse of the Soviet Union Karabakh war broke out. An estimated 30,000 people were killed from 1992 to 1994. Despite a ceasefire of 20 years, the area is heavily militarized.

It is also noted that Nagorno Karabakh has its own government, universities, even an international airport, though in reality Karabakh is isolated from the outside world. The airport sits empty as the civil planes risk being shot down by Azerbaijan. Besides, it is noted in the reportage that the children in the schools of NPR are taught self-defense not to repeat Karen’s mistake.

As the second part of the reportage has it, the Armenian inhabitants of Nagorno Karabakh call themselves citizens of the Artsakh Republic. The territory has its own flag, an international airport, police and armed forces, although regular Armenian soldiers serve on the frontline.

It is stated in the article that Nagorno-Karabakh is isolated. Financially and militarily it depends on Armenia. Its subjects hold Armenian passports. And the international airport stands empty, because Azerbaijan has threatened to shoot down any planes.
As the article reads, peace negotiations mediated by the Minsk Group, under the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), have seen little progress.

"The first goal of the mediation is to keep the peace process alive and the second goal is to prevent war,” says Richard Giragosian, director of the Regional Studies Centre, a think tank based in the Armenian capital, Yerevan.

Frustrated by the lack of a diplomatic solution, Azerbaijan's leadership has threatened to retake the territory militarily. Oil-rich Azerbaijan has spent billions of US dollars on modern weaponry. And most of the arms are supplied by Russia. That is deeply unpopular with Armenia. It counts Russia as its strategic ally, and hosts Russia's only military base in the region. 

"We are concerned that Russia, for all sorts of reasons, is selling weapons to Azerbaijan. The problem is not the quality of the weaponry, but the fact that an Armenian soldier standing at the border knows he could be killed by Russian weapons," the Armenian President, Serzh Sargsyan, said at a recent public forum in Yerevan.

The territory's de facto foreign minister, Karen Mirzoyan, says that without their inclusion in the peace process, there will be no resolution to the conflict. "When you withdraw NK from the negotiation table, it's very easy to say that it's not a conflict for self-determination, it's just a territorial problem and it's very easy to show Armenia as an aggressor. But in reality this conflict is about self-determination," he told the journalist.

The demining organization HALO Trust fellow Yuri Shahramanyan told BBC correspondent that their main goal is to prevent accidents. 

“One of the main challenges is accessing minefields in Nagorno Karabakh. There are hardly any roads, sometimes the roads have not been used for more than 20 years, in winter some roads are covered with snow, with mud and it’s impossible to drive. Karabakh is quite mountainous and most of high grounds, hills and mountains have been used as military positions. Normally armies would lay defensive minelines in front of the positions and this is one of those,” Shahramanyan said adding that they had cleared over 400 minefields, and they had got another 127 to clear.

“Last year there was an increase of accidents. There have been 8 accidents, involving 11 casualties, of which two people have been killed. It’s quite difficult to raise funds for Nagorno Karabakh because Karabakh is unrecognized republic. It will be free of mines one day and if there’s more funding available, we’ll be able to make it free of mines even earlier,” Yuri Shakhramanyan highlighted.