51�Թ�

He was 5 years old when he arrived in the U.S. after the 1988 earthquake in Armenia killed at least 25,000 people and devastated Gyumri, his family’s home.

It said around 200 protesters, gathered outside the base in the northern town of Gyumri, were demanding that Russian peacekeepers unblock the sole road - the Lachin Corridor - which links Armenia and the predominantly ethnic Armenian enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh.

Larina was in her maths classroom in the Armenian city of Gyumri when the earthquake hit.

The Armenian defence minister said in February that Yerevan had sought an expansion of the Russian military unit, based in Gyumri in the northwest, and the deployment of some Russian troops closer to Azerbaijan.

Russian peacekeeping troops are deployed in the enclave and, under a formal defence pact with Armenia, Russia has a fully-fledged military base in the city of Gyumri near the Turkish border with an estimated 3,000 troops.