Earlier this year, the Armenian government cancelled a CSTO military exercise planned in Armenia and refused to appoint a deputy secretary-general of the military alliance over what it sees as a lack of CSTO support in the conflict with Azerbaijan. It also rejected a CSTO offer to deploy a monitoring mission to the Armenian-Azerbaijani border.
The tensions have called into question Armenia’s continued membership in the organization. Deputy Foreign Minister Mnatsakan Safarian said on May 16 that an exit from the CSTO is “not on Armenia’s agenda now.” Pashinian claimed the opposite, however, during a news conference held on Monday.
“I don’t exclude that Armenia may make a de jure decision to terminate or freeze its membership in the CSTO,” he said. “But that will happen only if we conclude that the CSTO has left Armenia.”
The Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, Maria Zakharova, claimed to be bemused by Pashinian’s remarks while warning of their potential consequences.
“If this is a figure of speech designed to promote a position on Armenia's withdrawal from the CSTO, then it seems to me that one needs to understand the whole danger of manipulating words,” she told a news briefing in Moscow. “How the CSTO could leave Armenia … it’s not quite clear what they are talking about.”
The estrangement from the CSTO highlights Yerevan’s broader tensions with Moscow that also stem from the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict. In January, Pashinian went as far as to declare that close military ties with Russia may be putting Armenia’s security and territorial integrity at greater risk. The Russian Foreign Ministry dismissed the claim as “absurd.”
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov last week accused the West of pressuring Armenia to end Russia’s military presence in the South Caucasus country and rely instead on the United States for defense.
Pashinian insisted on Monday that there is no such “agenda” in his administration’s dealings with the U.S. or the European Union. He said that Yerevan is only discussing security issues with the Western powers because the Russian-led “security architecture” comprising Armenia is “not working for objective or subjective reasons.”