Concerns About Victor's Justice
Are Behind Bars And Facing Trial In Azerbaijan
"Up to the end, Ruben Vardanian remained defiant: Nagorno-Karabakh could not be part of Azerbaijan.
"The only way we can keep the Armenian state is if Artsakh remains Armenian," he told RFE/RL on September 19, using an alternative Armenian name for the territory. The interview took place as Azerbaijan was launching a blitz offensive to retake the territory, which Armenian forces had controlled for the past three decades. "If we lose Artsakh, we lose Armenia," Vardanian said.
(It's lost.)
"Just hours later, Karabakh was in fact lost: the territory's de facto leadership surrendered the next morning. And barely a week later, Vardanian was in handcuffs, being filmed as masked Azerbaijani security officers led him into a Baku jail cell, his head forcibly bowed."
"Baku and Yerevan were locked in a conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh for decades. Armenian-backed separatists seized the mainly ethnic-Armenian-populated region from Azerbaijan during a war in the early 1990s that killed some 30,000 people. Diplomatic efforts to settle the conflict brought little progress and the two sides fought another war in 2020 that lasted six weeks before a Russian-brokered cease-fire, resulting in Armenia losing control over parts of the region and seven adjacent districts.
With its September lightning offensive, Azerbaijan effectively regained control of the rest of Nagorno-Karabakh. More than 100,000 ethnic Armenians, virtually the entire population, have fled to Armenia."
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