Eurasianet says Armenia is continuing to move away from the Russia-led Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO).
For some time Yerevan has reportedly been questioning the efficacy of being part of a military bloc that's unwilling to help it in its conflict with Azerbaijan in September 2022.
Later, in November, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan refused to sign a declaration on the results of a CSTO summit in Yerevan, as well as a document on joint measures to provide assistance to Armenia, motivating his decision by the fact that the allies did not give a "clear political assessment" of Azerbaijan's September offensive.
In January, Armenia refused to host a CSTO exercise and on March 10 it renounced its right to take part in the bloc's leadership rotation.
So far the Armenian authorities are coy about speculation that the move could signal a full withdrawal from the bloc and/or a pursuit of military cooperation with the West, Eurasianet said, noting that the Armenian Foreign Ministry on March 10 officially confirmed reports that Armenia had rejected its quota for CSTO deputy secretary general.
"The CSTO does not recognize the internationally recognized border of Armenia. It is trying to use the arguments of Baku and convince us that there is no border there. But there is a border there," he said, adding at the same time that Armenia renouncing its spot in the bloc's leadership rotation contains no "political message," the Armenian Security Council Secretary Armen Grigoryan told Radio Liberty's Armenian Service in an interview on March 10.
The director of the Regional Center for Democracy and Security in Yerevan, political analyst Tigran Grigoryan told Eurasianet that “the Armenian authorities wish to demonstrate that Armenia's participation in this organization is only formal without any active participation in its activities. This is done in order to enlist the support of Western countries.”
It was in the context of CSTO inaction that the European Union on February 20 launched a civilian mission (EUMA) in Armenia, which is an expanded version of a previous short-term mission in October-December that followed the Azerbaijani incursion.
"The fact that this mission was deployed in Armenia is a consequence of the inaction of Russia and the CSTO in relation to Armenia's requests to intervene during the aggression of Azerbaijan in September last year," Grigoryan said.
Sergey Skakov, a Caucasus expert at the Russian Council on International Affairs, told Eurasianet that the move "complicates the general background of Armenia's relations with Russia" and that "Armenia is making things worse for itself."
He predicted, however, that Moscow will react with "restraint" and not move to sanction Armenia.
The Collective Security Treaty Organization is an intergovernmental military alliance in Eurasia consisting of six post-Soviet states: Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, and Tajikistan. The Collective Security Treaty has its origins in the Soviet Armed Forces, which was replaced in 1992 by the United Armed Forces of the Commonwealth of Independent States, and was then itself replaced by the successor armed forces of the respective independent states.
