Five of the ten former POWs have been accused with "violating the norms of service." The Armenian Investigative Committee has filed a request to detain them.

A judge has already authorised the detention of one soldier, while a petition to detain a second soldier has been denied.

The former POWs were apparently kidnapped during fighting on the Armenia-Azerbaijan border on November 16.

Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan threw doubt on the troops' detention a day after the battles, saying the government "does not comprehend" how they ended up in captivity.

On December 7, a video surfaced in which Armenian Parliament Speaker Alen Simonyan condemned "deserters" and claimed that Armenian POWs 'no longer exist' for him.

The video infuriated families of POWs and missing servicemen, who staged a protest outside the government building in Yerevan, demanding a meeting with Simonyan and an explanation. On the evening of December 8, Simonyan met with the aforementioned soldier’s relatives; however, no specifics of the encounter have been made public.

Following the video's release, Vahan Hovhanniyan, an attorney who dealt with a separate set of returned POWs — who were kidnapped in Nagorno-Karabakh in December 2020 — revealed extracts of the soldiers' testimony delivered upon their return to Armenia.

According to the transcripts, the troops indicated that they did not want to fight, and that more than 60 Armenian soldiers surrendered to less than a dozen Azerbaijani forces.

For Armenian side, since last year, Azerbaijan has kept at least 45 Armenian POWs.

Armenian POWs in Azerbaijani captivity have been subjected to brutal and humiliating treatment and torture, according to a Human Rights Watch study released in March. A number of POWs appear to have been the victims of extrajudicial killings, according to other sources.