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Russian-Armenian billionaire Ruben Vardanyan, who briefly held a top political post in the self-proclaimed state of Nagorno-Karabakh, was arrested as he tried to leave the breakaway enclave after Azerbaijan seized control of the region.
The former bank manager, who has ties to Russian oligarchs and politicians but moved to Karabakh last year, was arrested by Azerbaijani security services as he left the mountainous region along with thousands of refugees.
“My husband . . . was arrested and detained at the border by the Azerbaijani authorities as he attempted to leave the border this morning along with thousands of Armenians seeking to escape Azerbaijani occupation,” Veronika Zonabend said on Wednesday.
Azerbaijani forces captured the region last week – a breakaway Armenian enclave internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan – in a brief but decisive battle that ended a decades-long conflict and triggered an exodus of Armenia’s 120,000 residents.
The clashes followed a 10-month blockade by Azerbaijan of the only road connecting the region with Armenia, leaving residents struggling to obtain food and medicine. During this time, Vardanyan, who served as state minister of the self-proclaimed Republic of Artsakh for four months until February this year, remained in the tiny enclave.
Since last week’s 24-hour attack and Karabakh’s quick surrender, Baku has been moving to take over the region it first lost to Armenia in a war in the early 1990s, and officials have offered its residents Azerbaijani citizenship.
More than 50,000 people have fled to Armenia in the past four days, leaving the country through a border checkpoint set up by Azerbaijan during the blockade. Most were able to leave without any problems, but fears remain that border guards could track down and arrest members of the Karabakh elite.
Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev last week called the Karabakh elite a “criminal junta” and said those who committed war crimes would be “brought to justice.” He said: “Armenian nationalists, war criminals and the so-called leaders of Armenia and Karabakh took it [local] People were taken hostage and their brains were poisoned.”
A spokesman for a ministry of the self-proclaimed Nagorno-Karabakh government, which no longer exists as a unit since surrendering last week, said most of its leaders remained in the enclave.
Dmitry Peskov, spokesman for Russian President Vladimir Putin, said on Wednesday that Moscow was ready to defend Vardanyan’s rights if he were still a Russian citizen, but added that it would be “a different matter” if the oligarch became his Russian citizen would have given up the passport.
A spokesman for Vardanyan confirmed that the businessman is an Armenian, but not Russian, citizen. Vardanyan gave up his Russian passport and arrived in Nagorno-Karabakh last year shortly before the blockade began. In November he was appointed first minister.
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Vardanyan quickly infuriated Azerbaijan, which called him a “foreign element” and suspected he was a secret emissary of Russia, the Caucasus region’s traditional power broker.
However, the billionaire’s move to Nagorno-Karabakh was part of plans to increase his influence in Armenian politics, according to three people familiar with the matter.
Armenia was largely ruled by members of a Karabakh clan in the first decades after the collapse of the Soviet Union before current Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan took office in a velvet revolution in 2018.
Just months after Vardanyan’s appointment as minister of state, Nagorno-Karabakh’s de facto president fired him – the result of the billionaire’s failed attempt to seize power in a coup, according to two people. Vardanyan remained trapped in the enclave as food and medicine became increasingly scarce.
“Ruben stood by the people of Artsakh during the ten-month blockade and suffered with them in the struggle for survival. I ask for your prayers,” his wife said.
The ministry spokesman said there had been no contact with Vardanyan since Tuesday.
The Azerbaijani Border Service said Vardanyan was “captured at the Lachin exit point on the state border.”
“He was taken to Baku,” the agency added, and “was handed over to the relevant state authorities.”