News - Kremlin says it has no information about Karabakh former official Ruben Vardanyan’s arrest by Azerbaijan

Dmitry Peskov, press secretary of the Russian president, has no information about the arrest of Ruben Vardanyan, the former Minister of State of Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh), at the border of Azerbaijan, while trying to go to Goris city of Armenia’s Syunik Province, reports TASS. "I don't have such information, so I can't say anything about this matter," the official representative of the Kremlin told reporters when asked about the aforesaid information. "I don't know that he was arrested, I don't know by whom he was arrested, was he arrested at all, and does he have Russian citizenship?" Peskov added, however, that if Vardanyan has Russian citizenship, his rights will be protected by Russia, RIA Novosti reports. Earlier, Ruben Vardanyan's wife Veronika Zonabend issued a statement announcing that this morning her husband was arrested and held captive by the Azerbaijani authorities at the border when he was trying to leave Artsakh together with thousands of other Armenians.