A few days ago, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan met with extra-parliamentary political forces, including the chairman of the Republic party, Aram Sargsyan, who told reporters that during the meeting, they mainly discussed the results of the UN Security Council session on Armenia’s protest, Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Armenia, the last war, and its consequences. Regarding the observation about if military support from the USA is possible when Armenia is a member of the CSTO, experts claim that it is not possible, Sargsyan said that they also discussed the issue of leaving the CSTO with the Prime Minister: “The government is calculating from these steps. The resulting advantages and disadvantages. Naturally, the government is aware of my approach to that issue. It is aware of the public views on CSTO and Russia’s behavior. All this leaves a certain mark and is a topic of discussion. It is obvious, isn’t it, that Azerbaijan invites ambassadors to Shushi, the ambassadors of Russia and all CSTO member countries go, and when they invite here to go to Jermuk, everyone goes, except the ambassadors of Russia and CSTO member countries. This is an attitude that needs to be reversed. We offer countermeasures to the government.”
Addressing the question of whether to leave the CSTO and then, Sargsyan said that there are many countries in the world that are not members of any military alliance, for example, Jordan, Israel, but are partners of the United States. “The United States gives Jordan 800 million in military aid annually. According to my math, $400 million military aid will be provided to Armenia annually. The US State Department and the French Foreign Ministry have openly stated that they are ready to provide military assistance to Armenia, but they are unable to do so because Armenia is a CSTO member. In other words, the military equipment they have are new technologies, they give these new technologies to a country that is a member of the army or military unit of their rival country.
In other words, our presence in the CSTO prevents us from buying new military technological weapons and ammunition. And we will always lose to Azerbaijan with Russian weapons. In the last war, I talked with our boys standing in the positions of Goris, they assured me that if they had adequate serious weapons, that war would have moved to the territory of Azerbaijan. If they didn’t use the shock Bayraktars, our boys would have crossed their territory in this war.” Regarding the observation that the authorities are announcing that they are not buying weapons, Sargsyan said that it is a military secret and criticized those who spoke about it.
“During Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Armenia, it was enough to watch the hysteria in the Russian media, the state of mind of our state officials, the conclusion of all that is that Armenians, get your heads together, otherwise you will have more than you had during the 44-day war. It is very sad that Arayik Harutyunyan is doing this propaganda in Armenia one day later. In other words, the Russian Federation has nothing else, it scares us that you should not close your ties with the West, otherwise we will cause problems. Without it, they are causing problems, we are in the Russian swamp, which wants one thing from us, the Meghri Corridor, and Azerbaijan also wants one thing from us: to recognize the territorial integrity and give up Artsakh. Are we getting out of this or not? If we don’t leave, then we agree to give them a corridor and renounce Artsakh. And today they have given us a hand, if we take advantage of it, it is possible that we will be able to refuse their demands.” He added that he assessed Nancy Pelosi’s visit positively: “He assessed the discussion of RA’s protest at the UN positively.”
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In the background of all this, we see that in terms of security, in terms of the harmonization of the political process that took place, the possible dangers are smaller.” Sargsyan did not reveal the position of the Prime Minister regarding the withdrawal from the CSTO. In his opinion, there are more risks of staying in the CSTO, it is more dangerous than leaving: “We are not the first country to leave the CSTO.”
Aram Sargsyan said that the RA Armed Forces are at the level of the first level of preparation, because there are accumulations of Azerbaijani troops on the borders: “But there will be a new border conflict or not, I believe that after Pelosi’s visit, that risk has decreased dramatically, the probability of it is little. I have no doubt that by provoking Azerbaijan, Russia will want to show that, look, the USA came and went, there were border tensions. The problem of the 5th column here was to say: look what happened, don’t rely on the USA suddenly, otherwise there will be a war. Since the USA has not announced to leave Armenia, because it is a war situation, the rest are rumors. In the evening, drink thyme tea and watch a movie. There is no such problem. Enough scaring these people. There is a team in this country that has been saying day and night for two years that they are handing over Tigranakert, the enclave villages, they say the lands have been sold. This is a treacherous team that has a problem with taking power and doesn’t care what happens.”
Nelly BABAYAN
