President Aliyev: Baku Ready to Start Practical Communications with Armenian Community in Azerbaijan’s Karabakh Region

Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev has once again announced his country’s position on the fate and future of the ethnic Armenians living in Azerbaijan’s Karabakh (Garabagh) region.

The president made the statement during the plenary session “Moving Mountains? Building Security in the South Caucasus” that took place on Saturday within the 2023 Munich Security Conference.

“Karabakh Armenians are Azerbaijani citizens, are minority. Azerbaijan is a multi-ethnic country. And all minorities in Azerbaijan enjoy same rights and privileges including cultural, linguistic, and any other and also security,” Ilham Aliyev said while addressing the session.

He further said the official Baku is ready to start practical communications with representatives of Armenian community in the Karabakh region.

“And today in front of [US] Secretary [Antony] Blinken, I told my Armenian colleague about that. But we can do it only when Russian citizen-criminal oligarch, a person who was involved in money laundering in Europe, [Ruben] Vardanyan is out of our territory,” President Aliyev added.

Armenian-descent Russian oligarch Ruben Vardanyan surprisingly “renounced” his Russian citizenship in September 2022, on the second anniversary of the 44-day Armenia-Azerbaijan war. He arrived in the Azerbaijani territories temporarily monitored by the Russian peacekeeping mission and has become the so-called “state minister” of the illegal separatist regime. Vardanyan has advocated for a spurious “status” to be granted to the Armenian population in Azerbaijan’s Karabakh region, urging for the recognition of the illegal separatist regime as an “independent country” and positioning himself as a leading representative for these individuals. Despite having a confirmed history of extensive money laundering in Europe, the oligarch has been persistently demanding that the Azerbaijani authorities engage in negotiations with him.

Earlier this month, Azerbaijani news outlets, citing reports from Armenian media, announced that Ruben Vardanyan had fled back to Moscow. However, there has been no official confirmation of this claim.

Meanwhile, in November 2022, President Aliyev openly stated that Vardanyan was transferred to the Azerbaijani territory from Moscow with a “clear agenda.” He also added that Baku is ready to talk to those Armenians in the Karabakh region who live there and who want to live there, not with those who have been sent from Moscow.

While addressing the recent plenary session in Munich, President Aliyev said it was agreed with international partners that there will be discussions on the rights and securities of Armenian minority in the Karabakh region of Azerbaijan. He further again stressed that the discussions will be held only “with those representatives of Armenian community who lived, who were born, and who lived in Karabakh throughout their life.”

“But not with the person who was exported from Russia to have the leading position in Karabakh. Maybe export is not the right word. I would probably prefer the word “smuggled into”. Because nobody knows how he emerged in Karabakh and how he is trying and achieving to go back to Yerevan and from there to Moscow, and then back to Yerevan and then to Karabakh,” Ilham Aliyev added.