Belarus (bbabo.net), - The secretariat of the Collective Security Treaty Organization did not receive any official statements from Armenia about the suspension of the republic’s membership, CSTO Secretary General Imangali Tasmagambetov said in an interview with National Defense magazine published today, March 28.

“Yerevan really hasn’t been participating in the work of the CSTO secretariat lately. This is Armenia’s decision at this stage, and we, as an international organization, respect any decision of a sovereign state,” Tasmagambetov noted.

The organization’s activities continue in full, all procedures are observed in full compliance with the CSTO regulatory framework, the secretariat informs the relevant structures in Yerevan about the decisions taken and made on a regular basis, the interlocutor of the Russian publication emphasized.

“Both I and the secretariat work in strict accordance with the regulations and procedures adopted by the organization. We, of course, with the help of our analysts and the tools available to them, are analyzing the situation around Armenia and in Armenia’s relations with the CSTO,” said the administrative head of the regional collective security system.

He confirmed that certain events and sentiments among some of the Armenian elites are cause for concern.

“But we hope for the political sobriety of the Armenian leadership and a balanced assessment of the prospects for the implementation of various scenarios in relation to the organization. Let me emphasize that Armenia remains our ally, all existing obligations remain in force,” Tasmagambetov concluded.

The CSTO has not fulfilled its obligations to Armenia, “especially in the period 2021-2022,” Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said in an interview with the Greek newspaper Kathimerini published on March 25. “The practical result is that we have effectively frozen our participation in the organization. As of September 2023, we do not have a permanent representative in the CSTO, and we do not participate in CSTO events at a high and senior level. However, we do not block CSTO decisions, although we do not participate in them,” the head of the government of the Transcaucasian republic said then

Nikol Pashinyan, during a press conference in Yerevan on March 12, repeated the position of the Armenian side, according to which the CSTO did not fulfill its obligations to Yerevan, showed “inaction” and still has not clarified the area of its responsibility in the Transcaucasus, which Armenia asked the organization to do. At the same time, he called “the condition for leaving the CSTO.”

Moscow has repeatedly drawn attention to the fact that by talking about the “inaction” of the CSTO and the organization’s lack of desire to confirm its zone of responsibility in the Transcaucasus, the current Armenian authorities are trying to relieve themselves of responsibility and shift it to Russia. Yerevan’s allies in the CSTO offered it in the fall of 2022, after the September invasion of Azerbaijani troops deep into Armenian territory, the deployment of a military bloc mission along the border of the two Transcaucasian republics. However, the Armenian side preferred the deployment of an observation mission of the European Union, citing the fact that the EU recognizes the territorial integrity of Armenia within the borders of the former Armenian SSR (29.8 thousand sq. km), which the CSTO allegedly refrains from.

bbabo.Net