Russian Foreign Ministry complains that US and EU are “forcing” Armenia to withdraw from the CSTO
Pravda Ukraine
Maria Zakharova, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, has said that Washington and Brussels are influencing Yerevan to make the Armenian authorities decide to withdraw from the Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO).
Source: European Pravda, citing Zakharova at a briefing, quoted by Kremlin-aligned Russian news agency TASS
Quote: “According to incoming information, Washington and Brussels are persuading the Armenian leadership to withdraw from the CSTO, to force cooperation with NATO, to reorient military-technical cooperation and to sign a peace treaty with Azerbaijan without taking into account the rights and security of Karabakh Armenians,” Zakharova said.
Details: She added that Moscow sees “the destructive fanaticism the Americans use to persuade Yerevan”. According to Zakharova, such persuasion was carried out during recent visits by Samantha Power, the head of the US Agency for International Development, and Yuri Kim, Deputy Secretary of State.
Zakharova said that Western countries, in the pursuit of these goals, have forgotten about values and human rights.
Recently, relations between Armenia and the CSTO, which is controlled by Russia, have deteriorated significantly. Since the Nagorno-Karabakh war in 2020, the CSTO has not provided any practical assistance to Yerevan.
Background:
- Earlier this year, the Armenian Defence Ministry informed the CSTO that Yerevan does not consider it appropriate to conduct military exercises of the organisation in the country. Then Armenia gave up its quota of the CSTO Deputy Secretary General.
- In May, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said that Armenia’s withdrawal from the CSTO was not off the table.
- After Azerbaijan’s lightning operation to regain control of Nagorno-Karabakh, Pashinyan called the security structures on which his country had relied in recent years ineffective.
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