YEREVAN, Armenia (AP) — Armenia’s leader signaled Wednesday his intention to withdraw from a Russia-dominated security alliance of several ex-Soviet countries as tensions between the two allies rise.
Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said his government will decide later when to leave the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), a grouping that includes Russia and the former Central Asian Soviet countries of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan.
Amid the widening rift with Russia, Armenia previously froze its participation in the alliance, canceled its involvement in joint military exercises and snubbed CSTO summits.
On Wednesday, Pashinyan said for the first time that Armenia will leave the CSTO entirely during a question-and-answer session in parliament, saying the government will decide later when to take the final step. There was no immediate comment from Russian authorities.
Armenia’s ties with Russia, its longtime sponsor and ally, have grown increasingly tense after Azerbaijan launched a meteoric military campaign in September to seize the Karabakh region, ending three decades of ethnic Armenian separatist rule there.
Armenian authorities accused Russian peacekeepers deployed in Nagorno-Karabakh after an earlier round of hostilities in 2020 of failing to stop Azerbaijan’s attack. Moscow, which has a military base in Armenia, rejected the accusations and argued that its forces had no mandate to intervene.
The Kremlin, in turn, has been angered by Pashinyan’s efforts to deepen Armenia’s ties with the West and distance his country from Moscow-dominated alliances.
Russia was particularly irked by Armenia’s decision to join the International Criminal Court, which indicted Putin last year over alleged war crimes linked to Russian actions in Ukraine.
Moscow, preoccupied with the Ukrainian conflict that has dragged on for a third year, has publicly expressed concern about Armenia’s shift westward but has tried to play down the differences.
Pashinyan’s move comes as he faces a wave of major protests demanding he step down over his government’s decision to hand over four border villages to Azerbaijan as part of an effort to negotiate a peace deal with his longtime opponent .
