Armenia is not considering the possibility of quitting Russia-led alliances, including the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) and the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU), a senior official in Yerevan said on Thursday.
Deputy Foreign Minister Mnatsakan Safarian also told reporters that Armenia has no intention to raise the issue of the withdrawal of Russia’s military base from Gyumri either.
“At the moment, there are no such topics on our agenda,” the deputy minister said.
Armenia drew criticism from Russia earlier this month after Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian refused to attend the CSTO’s summit hosted in Minsk, Belarus, on November 23. Other Armenian officials have also declined to participate in events held by the Russia-led defense alliance that also includes Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan.
Maria Zakharova, a spokesperson for Russia’s Foreign Ministry, chided Armenia for what she described as veiled efforts by Yerevan to change its foreign-policy vector in favor of the West. She said Yerevan’s decision not to attend CSTO meetings was not in the “long-term interests of the Armenian people.”
Dmitry Peskov, a spokesman for Russian President Vladimir Putin, also lamented Armenia’s decision not to attend the CSTO summit, but said that the Kremlin expects that “Armenia will continue its work within the framework of this organization.”
CSTO Secretary-General Imangali Tasmagambetov said earlier this week that official Yerevan had asked to remove the issue of providing military assistance to Armenia from the summit agenda.
Armenia had appealed to the CSTO for military assistance in September 2022 following two-day deadly border clashes with Azerbaijan that Yerevan said stemmed from Baku’s aggression against sovereign Armenian territory.
The Russia-led bloc stopped short of calling Azerbaijan the aggressor and effectively refused to back Armenia militarily, while agreeing to consider sending an observation mission to the South Caucasus country.
At the CSTO summit held in Yerevan in November 2022 Armenia declined such a mission, saying that before it could be carried out it needed to give a clear political assessment of what Yerevan had described as Azerbaijan’s aggression and occupation of sovereign Armenian territory.
Explaining his decision to skip the Minsk summit, the Armenian prime minister told the parliament in Yerevan earlier this month that the “fundamental problem” with the CSTO was that this organization had refused “to de-jure fixate its area of responsibility in Armenia.”
Earlier, the Armenian leader and other Armenian officials had said that the Russia-led defense alliance’s failure to respond to the security challenges facing Armenia meant that “it is the CSTO that is quitting Armenia and not Armenia that is quitting the CSTO.”
Speaking in parliament on November 15, however, the Armenian leader refused to be drawn into the discussion of whether Armenia planned to formally quit the CSTO, nor would he speak about any security alternatives to membership in this organization.
“We are not planning to announce a change in our policy in strategic terms as long as we haven’t made a decision to quit the CSTO,” Pashinyan said.
Source: Azatutyun.am
