Moscow warns Armenia against leaving Russian-led defense bloc

PanARMENIAN.Net - Armenia could ruin its military ties with Russia if it withdraws from the Russian-led Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) and continues drifting towards the West, according to a senior official in Moscow.

“No matter what the Westerners increasingly courting Yerevan promise, there are no viable alternatives to the CSTO as a mechanism for ensuring Armenia’s security,” Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Galuzin told the TASS news agency in an interview fully published on Wednesday, June 5.

“The Armenian leadership seems to want to take advantage of the moment when the West is showing increased interest in strengthening cooperation, including in the security sphere, offering various forms and formats of cooperation. However, rash decisions that will give Westerners full access to national databases and information sensitive to the country’s security … could make it objectively impossible [for Armenia] to return to joint efforts to build a common defense space with Russia and other CSTO allies,” he warned, according to RFE/RL's Armenian.

Echoing statements regularly made by various Russian officials, Galuzin said that the West’s strategic goal is to weaken Russian presence in other ex-Soviet states, rather than boost their security.

Over the past year, Armenia has boycotted high-level meetings, military exercises and other activities of the CSTO in what Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan described in February as an effective suspension of its membership in the military alliance of six ex-Soviet states. Pashinyan said afterwards that it could leave the CSTO altogether.

The Armenian government accuses Russia and other ex-Soviet allies of refusing to provide it with military and political support requested following Azerbaijan’s offensive military operations launched along the border with Armenia in September 2022. It has also decried their failure to condemn the “Azerbaijani aggression.”

Armenian Defense Minister Suren Papikyan boycotted last week another meeting of his CSTO counterparts that took place in Almaty. CSTO Secretary General Imangali Tasmagambetov expressed hope afterwards that Yerevan will “bring clarity” to its status in the organization.

Pashinyan’s administration describes its efforts to forge closer ties with the United States and the European Union as a “diversification” of Armenia’s foreign and security policy. Its tensions with Moscow have deepened further in recent months.

Galuzin complained that Yerevan has reduced Russian-Armenian military contacts and ignored a Russian proposal to negotiate a new plan of diplomatic consultations between the two nations.

“We see this as a result of pressure from Westerners who are trying to force Yerevan to minimize ties with our country,” said the Russian diplomat.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov charged in March that Pashinyan’s government is “leading things to the collapse of Russian-Armenian relations” at the behest of the West. Russian President Vladimir Putin and Pashinyan discussed the unprecedented rift between the two longtime allies when they met in Moscow on May 8.