Former Karabakh leader sentenced to 20-year prison term in Azerbaijan

A military court in the Azerbaijani capital Baku has sentenced Ruben Vardanyan, the former leader of the now dissolved republic of Artsakh in the country’s Nagorno-Karabakh region, to 20 years in prison, local news agency Minval Politika reported on Tuesday.

Vardanyan was convicted on 45 charges in total, including preparing and pursuing a war of aggression, genocide, terrorism and financing terrorism. Vardanyan pleaded not guilty to the charges and claimed that the transcripts of his interrogation had been falsified. The prosecution had requested the court sentence him to life imprisonment, state news agency AZERTAC reported.

The former owner of the Troika Dialog investment company, which later became Sberbank, and the founder of Moscow’s Skolkovo School of Management, Vardanyan renounced his Russian citizenship in 2022 and moved to Karabakh to become prime minister of the unrecognised breakaway republic of Artsakh later that year, though he was removed from the post in February 2023.

Azerbaijani border guards detained Vardanyan in September 2023 during Baku’s military offensive to retake the breakaway republic, which had been under ethnic Armenian rule since 1994. He was arrested and charged the following day.

Vardanyan twice went on hunger strike while awaiting trial in protest against his persecution. Earlier this month, five other senior members of the Artsakh government were found guilty of war crimes and sentenced to life in prison. All of them had pleaded not guilty.

Control of Nagorno-Karabakh, which has always been legally a part of Azerbaijan despite it at one point having a majority Armenian population, was the subject of an armed conflict between Yerevan and Baku that lasted for four decades.

After 30 years of being run as a breakaway republic by ethnic Armenians, Azerbaijan launched a surprise invasion of the region in September 2023, taking full control of it and leading to the mass exodus of some 100,000 ethnic Armenian residents.