A banner reading “Free Ruben Vardanyan. Free All Armenian Prisoners.” has been raised on the summits of Mount Ararat and Mount Aragats by repatriate Georgi Kevorkov, in a call to free the Armenian hostages unjustly held captive in Azerbaijan.
“The appeal is very simple,” Kevorkov wrote. “Free Ruben Vardanyan. Free all Armenian prisoners.”
Kevorkov carried the banner to the two most sacred peaks of the Armenian Highlands: Mount Ararat, the eternal emblem of the Armenian nation, which sits within present-day Turkish borders as part of the historical Armenian homeland, and Mount Aragats, the highest point of modern Armenia.
“Ararat and Aragats are symbols of the Armenian people,” he said. “Raising a banner on their summits demanding the release of all Armenian prisoners is one more way to remind the world that this issue must not disappear from the international agenda or from the demands of the Armenian people.”
The Armenian hostages were seized in the wake of Azerbaijan’s September 2023 military assault on Artsakh, which forcibly displaced the entire Armenian population, more than 120,000 people, from a homeland they had inhabited for over two millennia. Nineteen Armenian hostages remain unjustly held in Azerbaijan. Ruben Vardanyan has now been imprisoned for 1,037 days, since Azerbaijani forces abducted him at the Lachin Corridor in September 2023 as he sought to leave Artsakh alongside his people.
A court in Baku sentenced Vardanyan, the former State Minister of Artsakh, to 20 years in prison, in a case heard under separate proceedings. On April 28, it emerged that he had been transferred, along with other Armenian hostages, to the Umbaki prison complex in Azerbaijan’s Qaradag district.
The show trial of Artsakh’s former military and political leadership, which began in Baku in January 2025, concluded on February 5, when the sentences were handed down. Former Artsakh President Arayik Harutyunyan, former National Assembly Speaker Davit Ishkhanyan, former Defense Army Commander Levon Mnatsakanyan, former First Deputy Commander Davit Manukyan, and former Foreign Minister Davit Babayan each received life sentences. Former Presidents of the Republic of Artsakh Arkadi Ghukasyan and Bako Sahakyan were each sentenced to 20 years.
Civilian hostages Madat Babayan and Melikset Pashayan were sentenced to 19 years, Garik Martirosyan to 18, Davit Alahverdyan and Levon Balayan to 16, and Erik Ghazaryan, Gurgen Stepanyan, and Vasil Beglaryan to 15 years each. Also among those unjustly held are Rashid Beglaryan, Alyosha Khosrovyan, and Ludvig Mkrtchyan.
