Armenia stays away from CSTO summit in Minsk
The summit of the Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO), the defence alliance of six CIS states, took place in Minsk last week. Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan did not attend, but nor has he announced his country's withdrawal from the Russian-dominated alliance, which remained inactive during Armenia's recent conflict with Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh. What do these signals mean?
Looking for an alternative
Foreign policy expert Arkady Dubnov sees Armenia on the path to a partnership with the West. He writes on Facebook:
“Pashinyan continues to insist on the elegant formulation that it is not Armenia that is leaving the CSTO, but the CSTO that is leaving Armenia. His statements are not unconvincing: the CSTO has not made up its mind concerning the borders within which it is prepared to defend Armenia, given that an - albeit small - part of Armenian territory is currently occupied by Azerbaijan. In the meantime, Armenia is seeking and finding new security guarantors in the West. But it continues to honour its obligations within the CSTO, which prohibit the deployment of military infrastructure by third countries on its territory without first coordinating this with its partners.”
A wait-and-see strategy
Radio Kommersant FM sees no signs that drastic action is being taken:
“To be more precise, Armenia does not dare make a move. The Kremlin's position is nothing new: 'There is no alternative to us, the West is far away and we are close. The former partners [the NATO states] have enough problems without Armenia, you won't escape us. There are more Armenians in Russia than in Armenia...'. And so on and so forth. Pashinyan is in no hurry to burn bridges. Clearly he's waiting to see what happens next, and in which direction the pendulum will swing. ... It probably all depends on how the situation with Ukraine develops.”