To reject the candidacy of the Russian oligarch and former prime minister of the unrecognized region Karabakh Ruben Vardanyan for the Nobel Peace Prize for 2024. This is what 18 deputies of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine, who published the copy of the document they signed on April 21, 2024 on their official Facebook pages, call for in their collective letter.
Putin's “peacemaker”
Kiev's reaction comes after the Russian oligarch of Armenian origin was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize on April 8, 2024 for his "development of peace initiatives". It is most likely assumed that he had a role in the preparation of the Peace Agreement between Armenia and Azerbaijan after Baku regained control of Karabakh.
At the same time, the news of his nomination comes against the background of the ongoing preparations of the Ukrainian army, with the support of the EU, Great Britain and the USA, to repel another advance of Russian troops.
"We consider it unacceptable and absurdly grotesque to nominate for a peace prize a person who supports terrorism and separatism, is involved in corruption scandals, sponsors Russian aggression in the post-Soviet territories and is an enemy of Ukraine,'' reads the letter of the Ukrainian people's representatives .
According to Ukrainian and international media, the deputies have grounds for similar characteristics regarding Ruben Vardanyan. In 2019, 22 Ukrainian MPs initiated the inclusion of Vardanyan in the sanctions lists as a "Kremlin associate".
Three years later, in 2022, 46 members of the US Congress added Vardanyan to the draft list of sanctions, along with the main propagandist of the Moscow regime - the TV presenter and head of the media holding RT Margarita Simonyan.
Also in 2022, by personal decree of the President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky, Vardanyan was added to Kyiv's sanctions lists with the following wording: "Senior management of a system-forming Russian company that is involved in...supporting actions , which undermine or threaten the territorial integrity, sovereignty and independence of Ukraine"
Finally, in 2023, the SBU added Ruben Vardanyan to the “Peacemaker” database, noting that Vardanyan is subject to "immediate detention and surrender to the law enforcement authorities of Ukraine or NATO countries".
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"Today is in "Peacemaker" - tomorrow on the list of nominees for the Nobel Prize. Absurd!", commented on his Facebook page the deputy from the party ruling in Ukraine "Servant of the People". Volodymyr Vatras.
"Sometimes I think the world is going crazy. That year - Don don, this year Vardanyan, maybe you will also nominate Putin for the Nobel Peace Prize? Surrealism...", also ironizes the representative from “Servant of the People” Anna Skorokhod.
“There is no way a criminal can serve the cause of Peace”
The authors of the collective letter emphasize that those who proposed Vardanyan's nomination for the most prestigious award on the planet are Russian agents of influence.
The fact that it is an operation to wash the reputation of "Putin's man", who could potentially compete with the Prime Minister of Armenia, Nikol Pashinyan, is evidenced by the "launching" of the news in the media space from Russian primary sources - “Sputnik” and RBC. The so-called "information agency" “Sputnik” is one of the main mouthpieces of Kremlin propaganda outside the Russian Federation.
The Russian media holding RBC is owned by the tycoon Grigoriy Beryozkin, who is on the sanctions lists of the EU, Great Britain, Canada and Australia as an "approximate" of the Russian president, "directly contributing to Vladimir Putin's senseless war against Ukraine and responsible for the pain and suffering of the people of Ukraine.
It is no wonder that in their letter the deputies of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine summarize: "We call on the Nobel Committee to reject the nomination of Vardanyan's accomplices, as it is impossible to serve the cause of Peace, being a proven criminal.
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So far, the Nobel Committee has not reacted in any way to the Ukrainian MPs' letter.
We remind you that the close associate of Russian President Vladimir Putin, Ruben Vardanyan, has been declared by the authorities in Kiev to be an "accomplice in the crimes of the Russian authorities against Ukraine".
Vardanyan himself is known for having managed the Russian financial company "Troika Dialog". According to the investigation of the International Consortium Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), money was secretly transferred through this company to close friends of Putin.
Between 2006 and 2013, more than 4.6 billion dollars passed through the accounts of Vardanyan's offshore networks. In 2020, the leading Russian opposition figure Alexei Navalny (1976 - 2024), who was killed in prison by the Kremlin regime, accused Vardanyan of accepting a bribe of about 50 million dollars.