Armenia said on May 8 that it has stopped making financial contributions to the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) after effectively suspending its membership in the Russian-led military alliance, RFE/RL’s Armenian Service reported.
“Armenia will refrain from signing up to the November 23, 2023, decision on the CSTO budget for 2024 and, thereby, from participating in the financing of the organization’s activities,” Armenian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Ani Badalian told several media outlets, including Armenia’s Public Television.
At the same time, Badalian said Yerevan will not block other member states, including Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan, from doing so.
For more than a year, Armenia has boycotted high-level meetings, military exercises, and other activities of the CSTO in what Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian described in February as an effective suspension of its membership of the organization.
The premier repeatedly said afterwards that he could pull his country out of the alliance of six ex-Soviet states altogether unless it addressed Yerevan’s concerns.
Armenia officially asked Russia and other CSTO member states for support after Azerbaijan launched offensive military operations along the Armenian-Azerbaijani border in September 2022. Yerevan has repeatedly accused them of ignoring the request. Moscow denies that.
The threats to leave the CSTO reflect Armenia’s deepening rift with Moscow.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov charged in March that Pashinian’s administration is “leading things to the collapse of Russian-Armenian relations” at the behest of the West.
Pashinian and other Armenian leaders say they are only “diversifying” their foreign and security policies because of what they call Russia’s failure to honor its security commitments to the South Caucasus country.
In other news, Russian border guards will withdraw from a number of regions of Armenia but will continue to be deployed on the Armenian-Turkish and Armenian-Iranian border following an agreement between Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The announcement by the Kremlin on May 9 marks a new step in Yerevan distancing itself from traditional ally Russia following accusations by Armenia that the Russian peacekeepers deployed in and around the region of Nagorno-Karabakh after a bloody war with Azerbaijan in 2020 did not do enough to stop a lightning offensive launched by Baku in September.
According to the agreement, the Russian border guards and military points located in Tavush, Syunik, Vayots Dzor, Gegharkunik, and Ararat will end their deployment and withdraw from those points.
Some 2,000 Russian peacekeepers have already withdrawn from the Nagorno-Karabakh area that had been for three decades under ethnic Armenian control.
