Ruben Vardanyan, a prominent Armenian businessman jailed in Azerbaijan, has launched a scathing attack on Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian and claimed that Armenia risks becoming a Turkish province.
In his latest audio message communicated to his family by phone and publicized on Monday, Vardanyan branded Pashinian a “liar” and again compared him to Kaj Nazar (Nazar the Brave), a satirically inept character from an Armenian fairy tale.
“First, I want to remind you once again: it is the people who elect Nazar the Brave as king; he does not become king by himself,” he said, appealing to Armenians two weeks before their crucial parliamentary elections. “Second, dear ‘Nazar the Brave’ Nikol, your luck ran out three times.”
Vardanyan revealed that during his two-and-a-half-year imprisonment in Baku he has read a book written by Pashinian more than a decade ago.
“After reading your book, I became convinced that you not only have serious problems with moral and ethical standards, with education and with other things but that you are also a liar, a fantasist, and a plagiarist,” he said, predicting “great punishment” for the Armenian premier.
Vardanyan went on to warn Armenians of an “extremely serious challenge” facing their country.
“This is not a question of elections,” he said. “It’s a question of the fact that the war is not over. The war continues not in the form of military action but in other forms.”
“If we don’t change our behavior, neither Russia nor the European Union awaits us. What awaits us is becoming a Turkish vilayet (province),” he added without elaborating.
Armenian opposition groups running in the June 7 parliamentary elections regularly accuse Pashinian of seeking to turn Armenia into a vassal state of Turkey and Azerbaijan and even end the independent Armenian statehood altogether. Pashinian denies this, saying that he is bringing a final solution to the country’s long-running disputes with its Turkic neighbors.
Vardanyan, who held the second-highest post in Nagorno-Karabakh’s leadership from November 2022 to February 2023, was arrested at an Azerbaijani checkpoint in the Lachin corridor in September 2023 as he fled the region along with its practically entire ethnic Armenian population. Seven other former Karabakh Armenian leaders were also arrested during the exodus that followed an Azerbaijani military offensive.
Five of them were sentenced to life imprisonment while the two others as well as Vardanyan received 20-year jail sentences in February at the end of yearlong trials denounced by Amnesty International as a “travesty.” They all denied a long list of accusations brought against them.
Pashinian and other Armenian officials insist that Yerevan has been doing its best to try to secure the release of these and 11 other Armenians remaining in Azerbaijani captivity. Their critics dismiss these assurances. Vardanyan has likewise repeatedly accused the Armenian government of being indifferent to the fate of the prisoners.
“The defeated commander-in-chief does nothing so that these people may at least feel that a state stands behind them,” he charged in his latest statement from the Azerbaijani prison.
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