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Armenia’s prime minister said he is pulling his country out of the Collective Security Treaty Organization.
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The CSTO, a military alliance of post-Soviet states, is considered Putin’s answer to NATO.
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But tensions have increased, and this is just the latest conflict between Russia’s so-called allies.
A key Russian ally said it is withdrawing from the Collective Security Treaty Organization, a group widely seen as President Vladimir Putin’s answer to NATO.
Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, who has repeatedly rejected Russia, said in parliament on Wednesday that he will pull his country out of the Moscow-led CSTO alliance, the Associated Press reported.
Pashinyan said his government would decide later when to take this step, the AP reported.
Experts previously told Business Insider that Putin created the alliance – made up of Russia, Armenia, Kazakhstan, Belarus, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan – as a rival to NATO, and that he wanted to project power by leading a multinational body, despite most problems. members that do not have significant armies or large economies.
However, the plan appears to have backfired as tensions within the alliance have increased, especially since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
Pashinyan’s latest announcement is likely to be a huge blow to Putin.
Pashinyan told lawmakers: “We will leave. We will decide when we will leave. We will not come back, there is no other way.”
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Thursday that Russia “will continue to work with our Armenian friends” to clarify their position, Russia’s state-controlled news agency TASS reported.
Peter Frankopan, an expert on the history of Russia and the Balkans at the University of Oxford, told BI that while other CSTO countries will likely shrug, Moscow will ultimately have a stronger response.
Moscow will likely see Armenia trying to be “too big for small boots – so there will undoubtedly be repercussions to show the downsides of daring to stand up to Russia,” he said. “What they are, and when they take place, is a matter of guesswork.”
In the immediate aftermath, Armenia’s foreign minister denied that Pashinyan said the country was pulling out, in an apparent attempt to soften the diplomatic impact, the AP reported.
Tensions between Russia and Armenia have increased since Putin’s large-scale invasion of Ukraine, which Pashinyan has repeatedly refused to endorse.
Pashinyan said in June 2023 that his country “not Russia’s ally in the war with Ukraine” and that the country felt trapped between Russia and the West.
Relations between Russia and other CSTO members have also grown tense since the invasion, with countries seeing Russia’s entanglement in Ukraine – causing some to worry about how protected they are if attacked, experts previously told BI.
Pashinyan was also irritated when Russian peacekeepers failed to come to Armenia’s aid last year when Azerbaijan attacked a separatist region largely controlled by ethnic Armenians.
He previously called the CSTO’s response to the ongoing conflict “depressing” and “enormous damage to the image of the CSTO, both in our country and abroad.”
Pashinyan raised the issue again on Wednesday, accusing unspecified CSTO countries of plotting against Armenia in the conflict.
“It turned out that the members did not fulfill their treaty obligations and planned a war against us together with Azerbaijan,” Pashinyan said, according to the AP.
Frankopan said the latest development may not end with Armenia’s departure from the CSTO, if negotiations take place.
“Talking about withdrawal could provide an opportunity for all sides to correct course, so we may see a shadowboxing match rather than something definitive,” he said.
But he added that Armenia’s potential withdrawal is “a long time coming” given the country’s escalating complaints about Russia’s leadership in the alliance.
Other recent Armenian criticism of Russia includes the country joining the International Criminal Court in February, even though the country has issued an arrest warrant for Putin.
Armenia froze its membership in the CSTO in February but had not further clarified its position until Wednesday.
In June, Armenia was asked at a meeting of the foreign ministers of CSTO member states to clarify its membership status, with the foreign minister later saying only that he has “excellent personal relations” with the bloc’s secretary general .
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