A military court in Baku also handed slightly shorter prison sentences to eight other Karabakh Armenians tried together with them. Ruben Vardanyan, an Armenian-born businessman who briefly served as Karabakh premier in late 2022 and early 2023, was sentenced to 20 years in prison in a separate trial two weeks later. Vardanyan did not appeal against his sentence, unlike the seven other former Karabakh leaders. The former Karabakh Armenian leaders were captured right after the 2023 Azerbaijani offensive that restored Baku’s full control over Karabakh and forced the region’s Armenian population to flee to Armenia. He has repeatedly lambasted Pashinian in statements from an Azerbaijani prison released through his family.