(Bloomberg) -- Ruben Vardanyan, a founder of one of Moscow’s first investment banks who renounced his Russian citizenship last month, said he’s taking up a top post to help run the Armenian administration of the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh.

Vardanyan announced that from November he’ll become state minister of Artsakh, the Armenian name for the territory that’s internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan and which has been at the center of a conflict since the Soviet Union’s collapse more than 30 years ago. He said he’ll use the second-highest position in the unrecognized self-declared republic to “set out our strategic goals and priority tasks.”  

 

Vardanyan, an ethnic Armenian, became a citizen of Armenia last year after the country’s defeat in a 44-day war with Azerbaijan in 2020 that killed thousands of troops on both sides. Azerbaijani forces took over part of Nagorno-Karabakh and regained seven surrounding districts occupied by Armenians for decades until Russian President Vladimir Putin negotiated a truce accord. 

Armenia and Azerbaijan have since begun US-backed talks on a comprehensive peace agreement that officials on both sides have said could be achieved by the end of the year, even as clashes last month killed hundreds of troops. The talks aim to resolve the conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh and open up the international border between the two Caucasus states.

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Vardanyan, 54, said in September that he’d moved to Nagorno-Karabakh to “take my share of responsibility for the future” of the mostly Armenian-populated region.

The leadership of Artsakh should become a party to the negotiation process, relying on the opinion of the residents who voted for the independence of the Artsakh Republic during a referendum in Dec. 1991, Vardanyan said.

“We believe that it cannot be otherwise, because the fate of Artsakh must be decided by the people living in Artsakh,” he said.

He helped found Troika Dialog in 1991 as Communism and the Soviet Union were collapsing, developing it into one of Russia’s largest investment banks until it was sold for $1 billion in 2012 to state-owned Sberbank PJSC, which then paid an extra $400 million the following year. 

(Updates with comments by Ruben Vardanyan from the sixth paragraph)

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