Freedom for Ruben Vardanyan & the Armenian Prisoners

By Garin Hovannisian
Long before I saw the images of him circulating on social media this week – his beard faded to white, his face thinned down, his expressions stoic as he stands trial for political terrorism and 41 other charges in Baku, Azerbaijan – I recognized Ruben Vardanyan as the broad-shouldered, black-bearded billionaire holding court at the other end of a cocktail party.
The year was 2013 and Mr. Vardanyan was spending less time in Russia, where he had amassed a banking fortune after the fall of the Soviet Union, and more time in his native Armenia, where he was launching philanthropic projects. It was a private celebration of one of these – a prestigious UWC school in the town of Dilijan – that I had decided to crash. I needed to ask Mr. Vardanyan for money.
Amid suits and ties, the tycoon was dressed casually. His gestures were modest, his manner quiet. This calmed me as I approached. In another moment, I was standing before Mr. Vardanyan and going off about the film I wanted to make.
“How much have you raised?” he asked. “This is my first pitch,” I replied. And from his grin I understood I’d already made a rookie mistake. But Mr. Vardanyan didn’t take this opportunity to decline. Instead he told me to go start raising money. If I proved I could, he would invest the final piece. He would be the last money in.
We shook hands. I returned to him a few months later. And he kept his promise.
As I set out to make my first film – and the three others after – Mr. Vardanyan became more active in Armenia. Soon he was a household name, known for such ventures as the Wings of Tatev cableway and the Aurora Prize for Awakening Humanity. He brought George Clooney to Yerevan, Armenia’s capital, to award the first annual million-dollar prize.
In our post-soviet republic, Mr. Vardanyan was a man easy to admire – and even easier to resent, especially if you weren’t invited to the party. While he didn’t take any official post with our pro-Russian government – and though his own personal style trended West – Mr. Vardanyan was, nevertheless, linked to that general brotherhood of oligarchs and authoritarians that ran our region. So that when a velvet revolution swept Armenia in 2018, bringing a former political prisoner to power, Mr. Vardanyan wasn’t viewed to be a part of the solution.
In the following years, the new Armenian authorities presided over – among other things – reforms, vendettas, and rearrangements of Armenia’s foreign policy that challenged Russia’s status as Armenia’s lord and protector. Many believed that such rearrangements helped create the perfect conditions for war.
In the fall of 2020, under cover of COVID-19, Azerbaijani forces moved for the 120,000 Armenians living in the embattled, unrecognized Republic of Artsakh, or Nagorno Karabakh, which Azerbaijan claimed as its own. With Syrian mercenaries, Israeli drones, and Turkish helicopters, they proceeded swiftly. After 44 days of bloodshed – with thousands killed and most of the republic lost – Russia stepped in to broker a ceasefire.
So Azerbaijan had triumphed. Armenia had suffered a humiliating defeat. And Russian soldiers were invited to the region once again. Their presence wouldn’t be permanent, however. It was a matter of time before Azerbaijan would return to finish the job.
This is when Mr. Vardanyan stepped into action. In a surprise, sensational move, he renounced his Russian citizenship, founded a political party in Armenia, then himself moved to the remnants of the Republic of Artsakh. As its State Minister, the number two job in its capital Stepanakert, Mr. Vardanyan hoped to bring global attention to the Armenians facing extermination there.
Conspiracy theories followed. Some said Mr. Vardanyan had been sent by Moscow to make the republic a Russian protectorate – others to preside over its surrender to Azerbaijan. The simpler explanation – that a man might have ambitions beyond his own money and comfort, or be stirred by such romantic ideas as patriotism or justice – seemed much less plausible. And certainly more palatable to those whose spirit had never been stirred by such ideas.
The conspiracy theories about Ruben Vardanyan continued even after Azerbaijan returned to Artsakh in 2023 – perpetrated the ethnic cleansing of its native Armenian population – raided its churches and cemeteries – and freed those lands, for the first time in thousands of years, of all Armenian presence. They continued even as Azerbaijan arrested, among 15 other ex-officials, Mr. Vardanyan himself.
And yet, as the trial of the Armenian political prisoners begins behind closed doors in Baku, those few images of him begin to show us something we can’t deny – something we recognize as an almost historical memory. Deprived of counsel and water – thinned to the bone – disowned by the Russia that made him, ignored by the West whose values he romanticized, abandoned by his own Armenian government – standing one last time to face his life sentence – Ruben Vardanyan looks finally, completely Armenian.
Whether he is to return to us as one of our own boys or graduate into higher form – to become one of the mythic figures that have sustained the struggle of our ancient Christian people – Ruben Vardanyan and his fellow prisoners will soon be free.