Russia uses the same methods, after all, in occupied Ukraine. Russian oligarchs and government ministers have been dispatched to run these occupied Ukrainian regions – Crimea, Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhya, and Kherson – on behalf of the Kremlin as ‘curators’ – Sergey Kiriyenko, who maintains the Kremlin’s political control over these territories, Alexander Malkevich, who oversees information and propaganda efforts and Sergei Sinitsyn who controls the police and secret services. Together they impose Russia’s fascist dictatorship on occupied Ukraine, repress the local population, deport children and extract as much corruption as they can for themselves and their criminal bosses.
But let’s look at the facts about Armenian-Russian oligarch Ruben Vardanyan.
Some 30 years ago a fake puppet state, as the USSR was disintegrating, was created by Armenia – with the help of Russia – through the military occupation of one-fifth of the sovereign territory of its neighbor, Azerbaijan. Fast forward to 2022 and, with the illegal state’s end in sight, the Kremlin dispatched a trusted oligarch, Vardanyan, to take over from its failing ethnic Armenian leadership in the hope of prolonging its existence.
Vardanyan was acceptable for this mission because he built his business empire in Russia’s ‘Wild East’ in the 1990s and owes his billions to fealty to the Kremlin’s crony economic system. Russia’s powerful secret services had collected evidence of his corruption as kompromat (compromising materials) that made him their gofer. Vardanyan was also acceptable to those in the fake state over whom he assumed control because he is himself ethnic Armenian. He was acceptable to the pro-Russian opposition in Armenia who viewed him as the vehicle to remove pro-Western Nikol Pashinyan and bring them back to power. Vardanyan was acceptable to many in the pro-Russian Armenian diaspora in the US and France because he had showered them with his philanthropic largesse.
All of this is beyond dispute.
Yet supporters of Vardanyan condemned his detention by Azerbaijan and never wanted to talk about how exactly he made his billions in Russia’s ‘Wild East’. They also never want to discuss why Vardanyan is individually sanctioned by Ukraine for being one of Putin’s loyal supporters of Russia’s genocidal war against Ukraine.
Vardanyan has not sold his shareholding in KAMAZ, the Russian military vehicle manufacturer – despite its critical role supplying the Kremlin’s war effort in its war against Ukraine, and if the country is defeated, in a war against NATO. He is the founder and funder of the Skolkovo School of Management, the ‘elite academy’ at the Russian dictator’s prized high-tech research centre rival to Silicon Valley on the outskirts of Moscow.
Vardanyan is not simply a ‘seasoned investment professional’ and incarcerated for being a ‘Christian’. The main religious prisoners in Azerbaijan are Muslim extremists funded, trained and equipped by Iran. Azerbaijan is highly praised as a country with religious tolerance which hosts the oldest Jewish community in the world, the Mountain Jews who arrived as far back as 457 BCE.
Vardanyan’s religion is irrelevant. He is not being tried for his religious beliefs.
The reality is that Vardanyan is on trial in Azerbaijan for, amongst other charges the occupation of a sovereign Azerbaijani territory, the funding of terrorism, and the commission of war crimes. Azerbaijan has legal authority to prosecute him, and others, for these acts committed on their sovereign territory. Just as Ukraine has every right to prosecute Russian war criminals after the war ends.
The United Nations U.N. Working Group on Arbitrary Detention and the International Court of Justice (ICJ) have both ruled that Azerbaijan has every legal right to do so. These two key international bodies have judged Azerbaijan’s position on his trial is not arbitrary, and that it is free, fair, and legitimate to continue.
Let’s put this into a US context.
If Mexico had invaded Arizona and occupied one fifth of that state for more than 3 decades, and then a Mexican-born oligarch who had made his money elsewhere was sent to rescue it before the US military finally liberated its sovereign territory – would the US arrest that oligarch and put him on trial? Of course, America would. America would put him on trial for the internationally recognized crime of aggression, in this case against US sovereignty.
As a British-Ukrainian I hope one day Vardanyan might also be tried in Ukraine for his support for Russia’s illegal and genocidal war against Ukrainians. In the meantime, we should be supporting Vardanyan’s trial in Azerbaijan – and war crimes investigations and future trials of Russian leaders, journalists and oligarchs who have supported and fanned a genocidal war. America and Europe should be supporting the pursuit of justice in Azerbaijan, and in the future in Ukraine, by preventing Kremlin cronies like Vardanyan evading justice.
Taras Kuzio is a professor of political science at the National University of Kyiv Mohyla Academy.
