Criminal case against Armenian separatist sent to Baku Military Court

The investigation into the criminal case against Ruben Karlenovich Vardanyan, a citizen of Armenia, has been concluded, a joint statement by Azerbaijan's General Prosecutor's Office and the National Security Service said.

Vardanyan faces charges under 16 articles of the Criminal Code of Azerbaijan. The case was officially transferred to the Baku Military Court for further consideration on December 28, 2024, Caliber.Az reports.

Vardanyan has been charged under Articles 214-1 (financing of terrorism), 279.3 (participation in the creation and activities of armed formations or groups not provided for by law) and 318.1 (illegal crossing of the state border of the Republic of Azerbaijan) of the Azerbaijani Criminal Code.

Ruben Vardanyan, an Armenian tycoon who fueled separatism financially and politically, was the first criminal junta member detained by the servicemen of Azerbaijan’s border service on September 27, 2023.

During the 44-day Armenia-Azerbaijan war in 2020, Yerevan-born Vardanyan was in the Karabakh region of Azerbaijan talking about his financial support to the separatist regime in the Azerbaijani territory. Later in September 2022, he moved illegally to Karabakh after renouncing his Russian citizenship.

In Karabakh, he took the office of the self-designed “state minister” of the Armenian separatist entity from November 2022 to February 2023.  He was at the forefront of the calls for the recognition of the so-called “Artsakh”, i.e. Karabakh, as an “independent state”, as well as calls for an armed resistance in Karabakh. Vardanyan also spared no effort to derail a possible dialogue between the Armenian community of Karabakh and the government of Azerbaijan, promoting the separatists as “authorities” Baku should deal with.

By Vafa Guliyeva