FORBES WOMAN
Veronika Zonabend
Exclusive interview — English translation (abridged version)
Photos and text: Forbes.ru
In an exclusive interview with Forbes Woman, philanthropist and Noôdome co-founder Veronika Zonabend spoke about what happened after her husband, Ruben Vardanyan, was detained in 2023, how she now manages the family’s affairs and philanthropic projects, and the efforts she is making to secure his release.
— You say a call may be allowed today. How is contact maintained at all, and when did you last see Ruben?
— The last time I saw him was in the autumn of 2022.
— Was that in Moscow?
— No, it was already in Stepanakert; our younger son and I came to see him. And literally two weeks or so later the blockade began, when no one could enter or leave any longer. Essential goods stopped coming in. By the end of the nine-month blockade, starvation had in effect set in. Had it not been for Ruben, who managed to introduce a rationing system and to organize mobile ambulance teams and free canteens, the loss of life would have been even greater.
When Azerbaijani troops entered in September 2023 and the mass exodus began, it became clear that there was no chance left. And Ruben was unlawfully detained at a border checkpoint in the Lachin Corridor. That was on 27 September 2023. Almost a year later.
After Ruben was arrested, for as long as the Red Cross was still present there (the Azerbaijani government closed the Red Cross delegation on 3 September 2025. — Forbes Woman), its representatives visited the detainees once a month and made video recordings. So it was possible to see Ruben on video, with a gap of about three weeks. And we could record messages for him.
For more than a year there has been no video contact at all. Only recently was I able, through his lawyer, to pass on photographs of our granddaughters, who were born during the time Ruben has been in detention. Our elder granddaughter is already two; the younger will soon be three months old.
The ability to forgive, the ability to love and the ability to be magnanimous give meaning to why we live.
— In July you announced that you were preparing an international women’s humanitarian delegation to travel to Baku in September. What is its purpose?
— The purpose of the initiative is exclusively humanitarian: to meet the Ombudsperson of the Republic of Azerbaijan, to visit Armenian citizens held in Azerbaijan, and to deliver to them letters, photographs and permitted personal belongings from their families.
The Azerbaijani side acknowledges that there are currently 19 convicted Armenians in its prisons, some of them held there since 2020. In all these years no one has seen them and no one knows what condition they are in. Many of them are ordinary soldiers who have had no opportunity to contact their families. The number of missing persons is far greater. No one knows the fate of the rest. Since the closure of the Red Cross, there is no longer any reliable information.
My aim is to take a humanitarian step. In every culture, the image of a woman is associated with motherhood, humanity and life. Our appeal is to allow people to preserve their human dignity and to be treated as human beings.
Among the laureates of the Aurora Prize, which for eight years was awarded to human rights defenders around the world on Ruben’s initiative, is Marguerite Barankitse. During the genocide in Burundi, Marguerite rescued orphaned children. While she was working at a Catholic mission where members of the Hutu community were hiding, militiamen tied Marguerite — a Tutsi — to a tree and executed before her eyes more than 70 people she had been sheltering. For the surviving orphans Marguerite created Maison Shalom, the House of Shalom. It is not merely a refuge for victims; it is a place of rebirth, with a school, workshops, a church and a hospital. There, people learn to live together. Maison Shalom was destroyed five times, and each time she began again.
When I asked Marguerite — Maggie, as she is usually called — where she found the strength, she would answer: “Love will always prevail.” Marguerite has saved the lives of 30,000 children. She went to prison to see the man who had raped and murdered her niece. When she saw the conditions in which the murderer was being held, she asked why. The prison warden told her that the prisoner deserved nothing better. Maggie said: “Then I will come to him and bring him food.” This astonished both the guards and the prisoner, who simply could not understand why. Barankitse answered him: “You were simply not loved enough. I will give you that strength.” When he was released from prison, he went to work at the Maison Shalom shelter.
I am not capable of rising to such a height. But I believe that our future, our personal destiny and the destiny of society are largely determined by the role models we choose. The ability to forgive, the ability to love and the ability to be magnanimous give meaning to why we live.
Every human being deserves to be treated as a human being and not to be humiliated. Many wives and mothers have already responded to my call to travel to Baku. But everyone asks about safety. Judging by the way the trials in Azerbaijan were conducted and by what the captives were accused of, anyone who has ever visited Nagorno-Karabakh could be arrested. One of the charges at those trials was illegal crossing of the border. And yet, under the trilateral statement on the cessation of hostilities in Nagorno-Karabakh of 9 November 2020, signed by Armenia, Azerbaijan and Russia, Azerbaijan guaranteed unimpeded and safe passage into Nagorno-Karabakh from Armenia through the Lachin Corridor — the very place where Ruben was detained.
I have sent letters to several international organizations. First of all to Azerbaijan’s Ombudsperson, Sabina Aliyeva, who in a conversation with Ruben expressed her readiness to help organize the visit. So far there has been no reply. I sent a letter to the Prime Minister of Armenia. In April 2026, Ruben appealed to Armenia’s Human Rights Defender, Anahit Manasyan, calling on her to come to Baku and visit Armenian prisoners together with their relatives, with the support of Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan. Armenia’s Human Rights Defender replied to Ruben that she had no such powers and that travel to Azerbaijan lay outside her mandate. Then, in May, Ruben addressed the Prime Minister of Armenia, asking who was responsible for organizing the protection and support of Armenian citizens imprisoned in Azerbaijan. Ruben never received answers to his questions. I believe that ignoring the fate of one’s own citizens is unconstitutional. Under the Constitution, the government’s first duty is to care for the fate of its citizens. Asking for assistance for the delegation, I wrote to the President of the International Committee of the Red Cross, Mirjana Spoljaric Egger, and to the European Union’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Kaja Kallas.
For the Azerbaijani side, our delegation is a chance to show genuine goodwill at a time when the signing of a peace treaty is under discussion. After all, what I am asking for is elementary: to allow people to see their loved ones and to hand over parcels with necessities, letters and photographs.
— Ruben refused to appeal the court’s verdict; he did not recognize its legitimacy. What possibilities of legal defence remain?
— We have filed an application with the European Court of Human Rights concerning procedural violations. The text of the judgment was obtained only after a long delay. International defence counsel were not admitted to the proceedings. The President of Azerbaijan said that the proceedings at the Baku Military Court against the former leadership of the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic were a Nuremberg trial. But at Nuremberg the defendants were represented by counsel of their own choosing; there was an international tribunal, an international prosecution and observers. In Baku there was nothing of the kind — just as not a single piece of evidence of Ruben’s guilt was presented.
The proceedings were declared open, yet not a single international observer was admitted. International lawyers were not admitted. Ruben’s lawyer could not visit him and could not speak with him. The only lawyer granted access was a local, Azerbaijani lawyer, who by definition could not be independent. The case file and the hearings were in Azerbaijani. There was interpretation into Russian, but how adequate it was is unclear. Transcripts of the hearings were not provided. And when the lawyer was finally able to see them, a number of factual errors came to light. It did not occur to the court to verify the facts.
The indictment applies collective responsibility to everyone. That is why, for instance, his charges and the judgment include participation in events that took place in 1988, when he was a student at Moscow State University. Ruben is accused of absurd crimes — they stopped just short of accusing him of eating babies. In all, 41 charges under 19 articles. Even from official Azerbaijani media we know that prosecution witnesses told the court that they were not acquainted with Ruben, had never seen him and had only heard of him in the press — and yet they demanded the harshest possible punishment. The trial, which consisted of almost 60 hearings, lasted more than a year, and on 17 February 2026 the verdict was announced.
Collective responsibility was applied to everyone. Armenians were tried because, in Nagorno-Karabakh, they wanted to speak their own language, practise their own religion and live according to their own traditions. That is outright xenophobia. They were tried for politics under criminal law. And even the criminal proceedings were conducted in violation of Azerbaijani legislation, to say nothing of international law. That is why Ruben declared that he would not lend his support to this farce.
I understand that a personality of Ruben’s calibre is born once in a hundred years.
— What will did Ruben leave you when he left for Stepanakert?
— There was no separate will. He was not leaving in order to die. But the culture of making a will is, in general, an important subject for Ruben. For many years he spoke about succession, about the transmission of values. Our wills were drawn up long ago, and Ruben persuaded many people that this is something one has to do. He had exited his businesses. For the last 15 years he was engaged in our philanthropic projects. We institutionalized the processes of financial management; they do not require our personal involvement. Our family office has been operating for many years.
— Ruben had the opportunity to be evacuated from Artsakh on a Russian military helicopter. But he did not do so. Why?
— I don’t know about it.
— At what point did you stop discussing such subjects?
— While he was in Karabakh, we did not discuss such subjects. What could I have said to him? A person is the master of his own destiny. My duty is to support him. I understand that a personality of Ruben’s calibre is born once in a hundred years, if not more rarely. Such people cannot belong to their family alone; they have a mission at the level of humanity as a whole. I am aware of that. We talked about it with the children. The children believe that, towards his family, he acted unfairly. Yes. But such are the laws of life.
— As a mathematician, as an engineer, did you work out a Plan B?
— What Plan B could there be? One has to be ready for anything. Because any plan, any model presupposes certain constant, fixed parameters on which one can build. And when everything changes at once, when the platform beneath you is constantly shifting, all that remains is to cultivate in yourself adaptability, resilience and the ability to keep your balance.
— What resources are needed today to change the situation?
— There is no doubt that international attention to this issue must be increased. Ruben Vardanyan is the man who built the SKOLKOVO School of Management, thanks to which students, graduates, professors — a great many people — gained opportunities they had never had before; and the international school in Dilijan (UWC Dilijan), the first college of the United World Colleges network in the post-Soviet space, where children from 80 countries study. It was Ruben Vardanyan who initiated the Aurora humanitarian Initiative, through which millions of people who had become victims of conflicts in different parts of the world received support. It was Ruben Vardanyan who conceived and, together with partners, implemented the Tatev Revival — an impact project that brought together private money, the state and the Church. He built the Wings of Tatev cableway over the Vorotan Gorge, a fast and safe route to Tatev Monastery, a centre of learning and enlightenment in medieval Armenia. Thanks to that project, 150,000 tourists a year began coming to Tatev. Tourist infrastructure appeared, unemployment fell sharply, the restoration of Tatev Monastery began — the life of the entire region changed. And all of this, according to the ruling of Azerbaijan’s “Nuremberg court,” amounts to crimes against humanity. And Ruben Vardanyan has been sentenced to 20 years’ imprisonment.
— Which projects are you supporting now?
— We have implemented more than 700 charitable and social projects in Russia, Armenia and around the world. When Ruben left for Nagorno-Karabakh, we concentrated on the key ones — those that need our constant support. One such project in Russia is the Noôdome community. It is a project we conceived during a journey along the Volga in a large group of friends. Noôdome began with a small circle of friends and partners; today it is already 1,000 people. They are very different people, from different fields and different generations. But they are united by something greater than business objectives — a shared view of the things that matter most, a desire to influence the future.
In May 2026, on Ruben’s birthday, we announced the establishment in Russia of a new humanitarian prize, Bridges to the Future, in the fields of philanthropy, education and culture. The purpose of the prize is to support projects and initiatives that create sustainable positive change in the humanitarian sphere and that, following the example of Tatev, can serve as an impetus for the development of a region.
Ruben has now been nominated for the Václav Havel Human Rights Prize. It is an important international award. Almost every day people from different countries write and call me, grateful to Ruben for his help and his involvement. Their gratitude is inspiring; it gives energy.
— In 2024, Ruben Vardanyan was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. How did that work?
— He was nominated by a group of human rights defenders, including laureates of the prize, for helping people during the Armenian-Azerbaijani war, for preventing a humanitarian catastrophe in Nagorno-Karabakh, and for having been one of the founders of the Aurora Prize and having presented it. Azerbaijan launched a broad PR campaign devaluing everything Ruben had done. It turns out that real deeds and actions concern only a very small part of the world.
We are living at a break between eras. Ruben began speaking about a “perfect storm” as long as 20 years ago. The question is: are we now at the epicentre, or is this still only the beginning? Most probably, it is all still ahead of us. The movement is multidirectional. It is impossible to predict where the consolidating, aggregate vector will go, because all the processes are happening simultaneously. A crisis of values, an institutional crisis, an economic crisis. We entered the post-industrial era with the laws of the industrial era, in which all systems were created for a different reality. Systems of governance are collapsing, systems of education, the financial system. There is a struggle between generations. Artificial intelligence is introducing changes of its own. Today we do not know not only what new systems will emerge, but also what role the human being will have.
I think this is the time to return to ourselves, to understand what the meaning of life is for each of us and what our personal responsibility is. All our humanitarian projects are designed to help people find themselves, find their calling. In order to create something together, communities have to emerge of people with shared values who trust one another.
— Ruben often said that philanthropy can develop according to the laws of business. Many of the projects have time frames built into their names: Club 2015, Armenia 2041; the Aurora Prize was designed for eight years. Is Ruben an idealist? Did he draw up business plans for his social projects on the assumption that change would happen at that speed?
— The Armenian Genocide lasted eight years. Ruben’s involvement in the Aurora Prize, created as an expression of gratitude to those who helped Armenians during the genocide, also lasted eight years. Ruben believed that a large international movement would grow out of Aurora. In an ideal world without wars, the Aurora Prize would not be needed at all. Of course, Ruben did not suppose that wars on earth would disappear within eight years. The planning horizon for social projects is much longer than in business. And it is unclear how to measure success. Many qualitative characteristics have to be taken into account, not only quantitative ones.
Ruben and I were personally involved in all our projects. Aurora would not have become Aurora if Ruben had not devoted so much of his time to it. While creating SKOLKOVO, Ruben travelled to more than 50 universities around the world. When we were conceiving UWC Dilijan, I visited several dozen schools in different parts of the world to see how it is done.
We often met with incomprehension as to why we were doing this. Why invest insane amounts of money in a single school in Dilijan when for the same sum one could build 100 schools all over Armenia? Which foreigners would go there to study? It was the same with SKOLKOVO. When it was announced that business education would cost $90,000, as at all international schools, people said that could not possibly be. Yet in the first years students came from all over the world to study at SKOLKOVO.
Ruben’s projects are about creating an entirely new reality that did not exist before. It was the same with Noôdome. When we started talking about a club, there was only one understanding of the word “club” — a nightclub. Seven years have passed, and today Noôdome has become a community bringing together people of high intellectual and creative potential, ready not only to take but also to give. We wanted it to be one of the things by which people judged our country and understood its uniqueness.
Not all our ideas worked. The Phoenix centre, for example — a consulting company for business succession. We closed it when we saw that the situation with the transfer of inheritance does not work the way we had imagined. There were cultural projects that did not take off.
We try to create socially significant projects that require investment at launch but then become financially sustainable and support themselves. Unfortunately, today, when choosing between social and commercial projects, the best minds almost always choose business. The income figures for people involved in business and in philanthropy are simply not comparable. As long as status and prestige in society are determined exclusively by wealth, social projects remain the preserve of eccentrics.
— Ruben often said in interviews that the world is arranged on the principle that whoever is richer is right; yet in developing his projects he was in essence relying on the ideals of the Enlightenment.
— That approach — whoever is richer and stronger is right — is what has brought us to today’s crisis of all systems. And I do not know whether it can change, because the driving force of development is sin: the thirst for power, the thirst for glory, the thirst for gain. Since the time of Ancient Greece, humanity has been going in circles, discovering the same truths over and over. But experience is not absorbed. Creating a new system of coordinates means returning to an old one. In the past, elites were not only those with a great deal of money. There was an intellectual and a spiritual elite. Today, throughout the world, only one criterion of power remains — the material one. Capitalism is in crisis. And so are the Church and faith.
— So morality has disappeared altogether?
— Yes, it has almost disappeared and has been transformed. And then we are surprised at the size of the generational divide, at the absence of contact with our children. Children react not to what you tell them but to what you do. Children take in what they see. And what they see — including double standards, which they come to perceive as the norm — can play a cruel trick on their parents.
— What do you try to teach your children?
— To make their own mistakes and gain their own experience. It is impossible to make them repeat your life; they must have their own. Ruben and I are of one mind that our task as parents is to give our children the possibility of choice, not to make the choice for them. We impressed on them that the more they know, the wider their choice. Mathematics, foreign languages, the desire to learn something — these create the possibility of choice. Whereas if you study nothing and know nothing, there is no choice. We made far greater demands of the older children than of the younger ones. Perhaps Ruben and I were influenced by a conversation with the psychologist and educator Artem Soloveichik, who maintains that the most resilient personalities are produced by an upbringing in freedom. That is what we did with our younger children. At a certain point we let go of them, and they began to take decisions independently and consciously.
— Veronika, do you wish your daughters families like your own?
— I would like them to have in their lives as great a love as Ruben and I have. When you feel yourself to be — no, not one half of another person, but that the two of you are like two parts of one whole. And these are not just words. Right now, when Ruben is not beside me, I have the sensation that a part of my body is missing. When we are together, we have a feeling of unity and complete harmony. That does not mean that everything is always cloudless; it means that we have love. Of course I want all my children to have real love.
I believe that children of love are different; a spark of happiness is placed in them. They have an image of what a family is. I think that the relationships they saw in their parents’ family they will carry into their own. Family is very important. Whatever people say about the individualism of modern life, it is not good for a person to be alone. But family is also a great deal of work. And at certain moments, for the sake of the family, you have to be able to sacrifice your own interests in order to align your life with the life of your partner. And when children arrive, you have to sacrifice still more. The children, of course, will not appreciate that sacrifice, but one has to treat that with humour.
In our family we have an “enlightened patriarchy.” From the outset I consciously gave Ruben the leading role. And I never tried to challenge it. That is a matter of individual choice and of what is possible for each couple. In my case, I understood that with such a strong man beside me it would be absurd to lay claim to primacy. But ours is a partnership. I have always had the opportunity to develop and to realize my own ideas. That is precisely why I am able to step in and help as a partner. Had I not had that experience, then of course, without Ruben, I would not have been able to find my bearings.
— How has your family changed now?
— The older children have families of their own. And the younger ones have grown up a great deal. Many questions now have to be decided independently. But I have to say, the children have been remarkable; they are bearing it with fortitude. Everyone helps a great deal. They understand that all of it has fallen on me, and they try to lend a shoulder.
— Your eldest son, David Vardanyan, speaks on behalf of the family in the Armenian media. Was that your decision?
— We take decisions together. We have a family council. And David is the family’s principal spokesperson. He is fluent in Russian, Armenian, English and French, and that matters. The situation has shown that Ruben and I can be proud of our children.
Philanthropic and social projects
The initiatives and projects of Ruben Vardanyan and his family include the private SKOLKOVO business school (according to family representatives, the combined investment of Vardanyan and the founding partners exceeds $600 million); UWC Dilijan, an international college and the first college of the UWC network in the post-Soviet space, created, in Veronika Zonabend’s words, “to open Armenia to the world and the world to Armenia through education” (the family’s investment — $180 million); Scolae Mundi Armenia, a platform for implementing charitable projects in education; Above the Dream, a charitable programme supporting university students of mathematics, finance and economics; Matena, a school for senior and mid-level executives; participation in the Foundation for Armenian Science and Technology (FAST); the Aurora humanitarian initiative and prize for human rights defenders around the world; Philin Philgood, a service platform for NGOs; the Dilijan development programme; the Initiatives for Development of Armenia (IDeA) Foundation; the Tatev Revival project (total charitable investment — $34 million); and the We Are Our Mountains development agency, founded in 2022 immediately after Ruben Vardanyan’s move to Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh).
