While hope abounds for the future of the South Caucasus region following a United States-brokered peace deal between Azerbaijan and Armenia earlier this year, Washington must continue recalibrating its broader approach to Eurasia.
At the center of that recalibration is a hard truth: The U.S. needs to better connect the dots between illicit finance, narrative warfare, and regional instability.
The South Caucasus sits at the crossroads of energy security, great-power competition, and emerging trade routes. Allowing Russian-aligned oligarchs to masquerade as neutral or humanitarian actors undermines every one of those strategic interests.
In this pivotal moment for America’s strategic approach to the South Caucasus, the newly released documentary "The Oligarch’s Design: Tracing Power, Politics, Influence," offers a timely and necessary lens for U.S. policymakers — who too often treat the region as an afterthought.
Produced by AnewZ Investigations, the film sheds light on the mechanisms through which financial power and political influence intersect to prolong instability in some regions.
At the center of the documentary is Ruben Vardanyan, a former titan of Russian finance whose career epitomizes the Kremlin-era oligarch system.
The film traces his trajectory from Moscow’s elite financial circles to the separatist administration in Karabakh, including his carefully staged renunciation of Russian citizenship.
That move functioned less as an act of independence than as a political maneuver — designed to sanitize influence while preserving leverage. Yet the film is more than an exposé of one man’s financial dealings. It is a case study in how Russian oligarch networks fuse financial power, narrative manipulation, and frozen conflicts — and why the three-decade illegal Armenian occupation of Karabakh remains strategically relevant today.
The Armenian occupation persisted despite the fact that four U.N. Security Council Resolutions affirm Karabakh as part of Azerbaijan. Baku eventually liberated the territory from Yerevan during the wars in 2020 and 2023. For Americans, Vardanyan’s story should sound familiar.
Similar actors and tactics have appeared across Eastern Europe, the Balkans, and parts of Africa: financial power laundered into moral authority, illicit networks repackaged as “humanitarian” or “local” movements, and conflicts frozen not for peace, but for profit.
"The Oligarch’s Design" details how offshore financial systems — most notably the “Troika Laundromat”— enabled Russian elites to move billions beyond the reach of transparency or accountability.
These funds did not operate in a vacuum. They were used to shape narratives, sustain proxy political structures, and manipulate perceptions of legitimacy, particularly in regions such as Karabakh.
This is where the Azerbaijani perspective becomes essential.
For nearly 30 years, Karabakh and surrounding territories remained under illegal Armenian occupation, resulting in the displacement of hundreds of thousands of Azerbaijanis, the destruction of towns and infrastructure, and the erasure of cultural and religious heritage.
For those who lived through it, this was not a “frozen conflict”, but a prolonged humanitarian and strategic crisis — enabled in part by outside actors who benefited from instability.
The documentary underscores how figures like Vardanyan exploited that occupation.
Through money, media, and carefully curated imagery, realities on the ground were obscured.
Polished footage, youth camps, and selectively framed humanitarian narratives were not accidental; they were components of a broader strategy of narrative control, designed to recast separatism as self-determination and occupation as moral resistance.
That context matters even more today as Azerbaijan and Armenia move forward under the framework of a U.S.-brokered peace agreement. Washington deserves credit for renewed diplomatic engagement in the region, but diplomacy divorced from hard truths is fragile.
Sustainable peace requires acknowledging how external actors — particularly those tied to Moscow — have deliberately prolonged conflict to maintain influence.
Russia’s role in this dynamic is anything but subtle.
Vardanyan’s rise occurred within a system that rewarded loyalty to Kremlin interests, and his later involvement in Karabakh aligned closely with Moscow’s broader destabilization strategy.
Armenia’s deep political and security entanglements with Russia — as well as its warm ties to other destabilizing actors such as Iran — should raise concerns for anyone serious about long-term stability in the Caucasus.
By contrast, Azerbaijan’s post-conflict reconstruction of Karabakh offers a starkly different vision. Since regaining control, Baku has focused on demining, rebuilding infrastructure, restoring towns, and facilitating the return of displaced populations.
These efforts are not merely symbolic; they represent an attempt to reverse decades of destruction and reintegrate a region long held hostage by geopolitics and profiteering.
For the U.S., the lesson of "The Oligarch’s Design" is clear. Conflicts like Karabakh do not persist by accident. They are engineered, financed, and sustained by individuals and networks that thrive on ambiguity and paralysis.
Ignoring that reality risks repeating past mistakes — mistaking oligarch-funded narratives for grassroots movements or confusing moral posturing with genuine reform.
"The Oligarch’s Design" does not offer easy answers, but it does offer clarity rooted in hard truths.
At a moment when the foundation for peace in the Caucasus has been laid and old power structures are coming under scrutiny, clarity is precisely what U.S. policymakers should welcome.
Paul Miller is a Chicago-based media and political consultant. His commentary has been published in USA Today, New York Daily News, New York Post, Fox News, Newsweek, and The Hill. Follow him on X and Tik Tok @pauliespoint. Read More Paul Miller — Here.
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