Davit Ishkhanyan

Davit Ishkhanyan is an Armenian political figure, educator, veteran of the Artsakh liberation movement and member of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation Bureau. Born in the village of Ashan in Artsakh’s Martuni region, he studied history and social studies at the Stepanakert Pedagogical Institute before combining public service, education, political work and military service.

Ishkhanyan joined the Armenian Revolutionary Federation in 1989 and became active in the Artsakh movement while still a young man. He was a member of the student volunteer movement and was elected to the first Supreme Council of the Republic of Artsakh in 1991, placing him among the generation involved in building Artsakh’s first state institutions. During the first Artsakh war, he served in the Artsakh Defense Army and commanded the Martuni region’s 28th battalion.

After the war, Ishkhanyan returned to civilian life and served as principal of the secondary school in his native Ashan before becoming head of the Ashan community. He later returned to national politics, serving in the Artsakh National Assembly, leading the ARF parliamentary faction and representing the Artsakh organization of the ARF for many years. In 2022, he was elected a member of the ARF Bureau. He has remained an ARF Bureau member while being held hostage in Baku.

In August 2023, during the Azerbaijani blockade of Artsakh and weeks before the final attack, Ishkhanyan was elected President of the National Assembly of the Republic of Artsakh. He remained in Stepanakert through the attack, the collapse of Artsakh’s institutions and the forced displacement of the Armenian population. Azerbaijani forces later took him hostage in Stepanakert together with former Artsakh presidents Bako Sahakyan and Arkadi Ghukasyan and transferred them to Baku.

Ishkhanyan was then placed in the mass sham trial of Artsakh’s political and military leadership. He repeatedly rejected the charges and challenged the proceedings, including restrictions that forced defendants to submit statements in Azerbaijani. In 2026, the Baku Military Court illegally sentenced him to life imprisonment. The Baku Court of Appeals later left the sentence unchanged. He remains an illegally held Armenian hostage in Azerbaijan.