Russian President Vladimir Putin has revoked the citizenship of a billionaire of Armenian descent after he eschewed his homeland to move to the breakaway Azerbaijani region of Nagorno-Karabakh.
Ruben Vardanyan said on September 1 that he was looking to give up his Russian citizenship to make the move to Nagorno-Karabakh with an understanding of all the risks he may face.
Putin granted the request on December 22, along with five others, including businessman Konstantin Sidorov, who works in Britain and is known for his work in IT companies Inline Technology Group and RRC Group.
Armenia and Azerbaijan have been locked in a conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh for decades. Some 30,000 people were killed in a war in the early 1990s that left ethnic Armenians in control of the breakaway region and seven adjacent districts of Azerbaijan proper.
The two sides fought another war in 2020 that lasted six weeks and killed thousands of people on both sides before a Russian-brokered cease-fire, resulting in Armenians losing control over parts of the region and the adjacent districts.
Vardanyan has said that after the war "many people in Artsakh (the Armenian name for Nagorno-Karabakh) started feeling that they had been abandoned."
He then settled in Nagorno-Karabakh, moved all of his assets in Russia to his family fund, and subsequently became de facto state minister, an equivalent of prime minister in Nagorno-Karabakh.
Vardanyan, 54, was born in Yerevan. He is the former chief executive officer and shareholder of the Troika Dialog investment bank that was bought by Sberbank in 2011.
Last year, Forbes estimated Vardanyan's assets at $1 billion.
Since Russia launched its unprovoked invasion of Ukraine in late February, many oligarchs and business people have left Russia amid Western sanctions targeting some Russian tycoons close to the Kremlin over its aggression against Ukraine.