Dr. Marat Harutyunyan: The doctor who refused to leave Artsakh until the end

Dr. Marat Harutyunyan was among the last doctors to remain in Artsakh, staying in Stepanakert until the final patient was safely evacuated amid the devastation of the 2023 war. 

Harutyunyan’s dedication to medicine was shaped long before the wars reached Artsakh. Born in 1987, he graduated from the physics-math school in Stepanakert before pursuing medical studies at Yerevan State Medical University’s military-medical faculty. As a young man, he set out to fulfill his parents’ dream of seeing him become a respected doctor.

After returning to Artsakh through the military service system, he first served in the Sixth Defense District and later worked as the head of medical units in Askeran and Shushi. Following his military service, he specialized in urology-andrology and continued his medical career at the Republican Medical Center in Stepanakert.

In April 2016, while studying in Yerevan, Harutyunyan received an urgent call: Artsakh was under attack. Within hours, he returned to the Republican Medical Center, volunteering and dedicating himself fully to carrying for incoming patients.

When the 44-day war erupted in 2020, gunfire broke out near his building in Stepanakert early on the morning of Sept. 27, around 7 a.m. “I ran outside and saw explosions in the air. It didn’t look like training exercises or any other kind of controlled explosions,” he told the Weekly. Without hesitation, he shouted to his neighbors, “Get out, go to the basements, take the kids. This is war.”

Harutyunyan’s building had no basement. He quickly brought his family to a nearby shelter, then rushed to the Republican Medical Center.

“I decided to be where the wounded arrived first – the emergency department and intensive care unit. That was my frontline,” he said.

Throughout the 44 days of fighting, Harutyunyan remained at the hospital, often working without sleep alongside his colleagues, handling severe injuries and emergency cases. Reflecting on that period, he emphasized the importance of unwavering commitment: “Looking back, there shouldn’t be anything that makes you say, ‘I could have done this, but I didn’t.’ You must do the maximum — everything within your power — so that the question of whether there was something you could have done but didn’t does not torment you in the future.”

The Republican Medical Center in Stepanakert, where Harutyunyan served throughout the war. (Photo courtesy of Dr. Marat Harutyunyan)

To ensure his family’s safety, Harutyunyan arranged for his children to be taken to Armenia, while he and his wife remained in Stepanakert during the first days of the war.  After about two weeks, he sent his wife to join the children, choosing to stay and continue working until the fighting ended. “My wife stayed with me for about 10 to 15 days,” he recalled. “After that, I sent her to Armenia because the children were there alone and needed care. I remained until the end of the war. And after some time, when the fighting ended, we all returned to Stepanakert again.”

Harutyunyan’s commitment to his work remained unwavering, even throughout the blockade, when living conditions deteriorated and the medical system strained under shortages. With transportation limited and fuel scarce, he relied on an electric scooter to travel between home and the hospital. It became his most reliable means of reaching patients, especially during emergencies, when every minute mattered. 

Inside the hospital, the situation grew increasingly strained. “We had many patients who needed medical interventions, but we had serious shortages of medical supplies and equipment,” Harutyunyan explained. Doctors were forced either to send patients to Armenia through the Red Cross or to have them wait until treatment became possible.

On Sept. 19, 2023, when the fighting began, Harutyunyan’s family was scattered across the city. “My son, Gor, was at school, and my daughter, Ani, had also gone to school but finished earlier and was with my mother at her workplace,” he explained. “That first day, we all were scattered in different locations.”

Harutyunyan rushed first to his son’s school, bringing him to safety, before immediately beginning the search for his daughter. With no phone connection, he had no way of knowing where she was. That day, Ani remained with her grandmother, Svetlana, in the City Hall shelter, while his wife, Gor and their youngest child, Tigran, stayed in a nearby house with a basement where neighbors had gathered.

Harutyunyan’s family in front of the Republican Medical Center during the final days of the 2023 war.

Once he ensured his family’s safety, Harutyunyan joined his colleagues at the hospital. “The enemy and our soldiers were very close. They wanted to enter Stepanakert, where most of the population was,” he stated. “Our soldiers prevented that, but we had hundreds of wounded and killed. The enemy had more losses.”

On Sept. 25, another tragedy struck. A powerful explosion tore through a fuel depot near the Stepanakert-Askeran road. The depot, a vital fuel distribution point, was crowded with civilians trying to fill up as they prepared to evacuate. The blast left a large number of civilians with burn injuries, many in critical condition.

At that time, Harutyunyan was near the children’s hospital and could not reach the Republican Medical Center. He was informed that the wounded would be brought there instead. Within about an hour, around 60 people with severe burns arrived. The medical team worked continuously, administering pain relief, dressing wounds and performing anti-toxic measures. Harutyunyan personally assessed and treated nearly all of the patients.

The message Harutyunyan posted, urging medical staff to come and assist at the hospital։ “Please, I ask all doctors and nurses to come to the Children’s and Republican hospitals. I beg you, please come.”

Reflecting on those days, Harutyunyan emphasized the constant readiness required of doctors in war zones.

“Working as a doctor in a country at war means you are always preparing for the day war might start — living and working with that responsibility.”

He vividly recalled the day of the explosion at the Haykazov (Berkadzor) fuel depot explosion. Among the burn victims were a husband and a wife. Despite medication, the husband continued to cry out in agony. Nothing seemed to help. Harutyunyan approached them and asked, “We will do everything possible to ease your pain. Tell me what concerns you the most so we can help.” They said, “We aren’t crying from the pain. Our child is missing.” 

“There was nothing more to say,” said Harutyunyan. “We continued our work, each of us absorbed in our own thoughts.”

From Sept. 19 to 28, 2023, Harutyunyan remained at the hospital, fully committed to his duties. The decision to stay until the last patient was evacuated was entirely personal. “From the 19th onward, we had wounded people from the fighting, and until their evacuation, we wouldn’t leave. That was the decision in our family, and also mine.”

The explosion on the 25th intensified the urgency. Only a small group of about 10 to 12 medical staff remained to care for the wounded. Some had even returned after evacuating to ensure that critically injured patients received the treatment they needed. Harutyunyan was among them, determined that no patient would be left unattended.

The last remaining medical staff before leaving Artsakh, September 2023

By Sept. 28, Harutyunyan and his family were among the last to leave. “Mostly, we took our photo album, our memories and the belongings of my father, Telman, who passed away in 2008. He had a little corner in our house where we kept his things with care. There was no possibility of taking anything else,” he recalled.

Harutyunyan’s sole photograph of his father’s grave

Arriving at their temporary location in Armenia, Harutyunyan felt the weight of displacement. “It felt like only I had left Artsakh,” he explained. The doctor was thinking about what to do, whether to continue his professional work there or to leave the country. “After just two or three days, I started receiving phone calls from my patients asking, ‘What should we do? How should we continue the treatment?’ Little by little, I understood that it wasn’t only me. 130,000 to 150,000 people had left.”

He soon decided to stay in Yerevan, asking his family for six months to assess whether they could rebuild their lives there.

“This isn’t a foreign place for us. Armenia is our motherland.”

For Harutyunyan, these experiences have left deep marks, but they haven’t shaken his sense of purpose. Despite the hardships, he remains determined to continue his work and to carry forward what he built in Artsakh. Today, he works at the Erebuni Medical Center, continuing to provide care to patients and applying the skills and dedication he honed during years of service in Artsakh.

All photos by Nare Arushanyan unless otherwise noted.

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