“In 2009 President Barack Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize, then quickly proceeded to launch 563 drone strikes while fueling Arab Spring and other regime changes worldwide.”
News that Russian/Armenian investor and philanthropist Ruben Vardanyan has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize is driving Romania’s far-right batty. Romanian MPs and MEPs of the National Liberal Party (PNL) are gnashing teeth and pulling out hair over the former Minister of State of Artsakh’s nomination for his efforts to help implement hundreds of humanitarian projects in Armenia, Artsakh, and the Armenian world.
Romanian politicians have joined 18 Ukrainian parliamentarians in claiming Vardanyan is “an enemy of Ukraine” and “a sponsor of Russian aggression in post-Soviet territories”.
It’s a funny twist of fate that Vardanyan has been included in the list of “100 Global Leaders of Tomorrow” at the World Economic Forum and is now some kind of villain terrorist. The co-founder of the Aurora humanitarian initiative and dozens of other educational or humanitarian efforts is now on a hunger strike as a political prisoner in total isolation.
Last September, the armed forces of Azerbaijan invaded the region of the breakaway Artsakh/Nagorno-Karabakh, triggering the exodus of the 120,000 inhabitants. During the flight of the refugees, Vardanyan and seven other former officials were arrested. They now face trumped-up charges by the government that broke a ceasefire agreement signed in the aftermath of the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War in 2020. Many human rights and international mediators have said the Armenians of Artsakh cannot live safely under the Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev’s regime. Alixev’s government has been accused of hybrid warfare, ethnic cleansing, and genocide conducted against resident Albanians.
So, the man most responsible for seeking to avert a tragedy of immeasurable human impact is now on a Romanian/NATO hate list that grows daily. Most people are unaware that Artsakh’s Armenians are a distinct cultural group since about 900 BC when the region was known as Orchistene.
Vardanyan began the hunger strike when all his efforts for his expedient trial and the release of other Armenian political prisoners in Azerbaijan were ignored. The man who created the Aurora Prize for Awakening Humanity is being silenced by the satraps of an American empire that grows ever more desperate and evil. Deemed a close associate of Vladimir Putin, Vardanyan has even been nicknamed by the Western elites as “Putin’s Wallet.”
Suppose Vardanyan is the Russian president’s wallet. In that case, a considerable percentage of Vladimir’s cash/proxy has been funnelled to organizations like the Moscow School of Management SKOLKOVO, Skolkovo Institute for Emerging Market Studies (SIEMS), the Russian New Economic School, Japanese International Christian University, the UWC Dilijan College, the Armenian Cathedral of Moscow, the Oriental Historical Heritage Foundation, the Foundation for Armenian Science and Technology, and many other cultural/educational initiatives. Now, Vardanyan sits in solitary confinement, mainly because the Western liberal order deems it prudent. Ukraine sanctioned Vardanyan for being a board member of a Russian air transport company. And now Romania wants the political prisoner sanctioned by the Nobel Committee. Meanwhile, Vardanyan shows he walks the walk in a recent statement on his situation:
“I am now more convinced than ever before that values and principles are more important than even life itself.”
To get the complete picture of what’s happening here, one only has to look at who’s at the forefront of this National Liberal Party in Romania. Nicolae Ciucă, the President of the PNL, served with U.S. coalition forces in the so-called “War on Terror” in Afghanistan and Iraq. He was also the Chief of the Romanian General Staff, the Minister of Defense, and the Prime Minister of Romania. He also played a crucial role in Romanian military spending. He also said, “Romania is a safe country because of NATO.” When the Romanian general visited the Pentagon in the United States, he was met with a multi-branch honor guard of the U.S. military. I think I needn’t go further here.
If a dozen or more Romanian national socialists (social-conservative) and EU parliamentarians like Rares Bogdan are conjoined with their Bandera-loving Ukrainian “Volksgenossen” (German – people’s comrade) are hating this Armenian hero – Well, you can guess the rest.
Phil Butler, is a policy investigator and analyst, a political scientist and expert on Eastern Europe, he’s an author of the recent bestseller “Putin’s Praetorians” and other books. He writes exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.
