Nikol Pashinyan, the prime minister of Armenia, one of the six CSTO member states, made the statement at a press conference on Saturday, according to local media.
“Armenia has frozen its participation in the CSTO at all levels,” he said, according to a translation by the American think tank Institute for the Study of War.
Pashinyan said the Armenian public and other officials may have different opinions about Armenia’s choice, but his government sees no need to reconsider the decision.
He added, however, that Armenia might “feel the need to make another decision” in the future, according to ISW.
Pashinyan announced his decision to leave the CSTO – a military alliance comprising Russia, Armenia, Kazakhstan, Belarus, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan – in February.
But since mid-2023, Pashinyan and Armenian representatives have not participated in several CSTO events, including military exercises and political meetings.
In doing so, Armenia effectively abstained from participating in the CSTO for almost a year, ISW reported.
Experts told BI earlier this year that Armenia’s actions have damaged what Putin hoped to achieve through the alliance: projecting the image of Russian power.
Tensions have escalated between Russia and Armenia since Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, which Pashinyan has repeatedly refused to support.
In June 2023, Pashinyan said his country was “not Russia’s ally in the war with Ukraine” and that he felt caught between Russia and the West.
Armenia’s discontent also stems from its conflict with neighboring Azerbaijan and the CSTO’s response to that conflict.
The CSTO contains a clause similar to NATO’s Article 5, according to which members are supposed to help each other in case of attack. But when Armenia asked for help during the clashes with Azerbaijan in 2022, the CSTO did not send troops.
Pashinyan called the response “depressing” and “extremely damaging to the image of the CSTO, both in our country and abroad.”
Tensions between Armenia and Russia have escalated since then, and Armenia appears to have strengthened its ties with the West, particularly in buy western weapons and holding military exercises with the United States.
In June, Pashinyan then announced to the Armenian parliament that he was withdrawing the country from the CSTO altogether.
At the time, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Russia would “continue to work with our Armenian friends” to clarify their position.
Other CSTO members have also snubbed Russia since it launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
Kazakhstan, for example, rejected Russia’s request to send troops at the start of the invasion and sent aid to Ukraine.
Tajikistan’s president, meanwhile, appeared to rebuke Putin at a meeting of Central Asian leaders in October, demanding more respect for his country, despite its small size.
These countries, however, have kept their opposition to a minimum.
Regional experts have previously told BI that Russia, as the group’s leader and by far its largest member, holds so much power over member countries that other members are unlikely to leave the alliance.
Thomas Graham, co-founder of Yale University’s program in Russian, East European and Eurasian studies, told BI earlier this year that Armenia has never been as close to other members as it is to each other and to Russia, making it the state most likely to leave.
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