azatutyun.am. Hundreds of Armenian civil society activists as well as a group of Ukrainians and Russians staged a protest in central Yerevan on Wednesday against a summit of the Moscow-led Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) hosted by Armenia and attended by Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Armenian activists called on the leadership of their country to end Armenia’s membership in the CSTO that they said has failed to take any practical steps to defend Armenia in its conflict with Azerbaijan.
Daniel Ioannisian, programs coordinator at the Union of Informed Citizens, claimed that instead of providing security for Armenia, the Russia-led defense alliance, which also includes Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, gave its political support to Azerbaijan.
“We, in fact, got a situation where Russia and Belarus supported Azerbaijan politically, while the other CSTO members did absolutely nothing,” Ioannisian said.
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The activist referred to the lack of condemnation by the CSTO of Azerbaijan’s aggression against Armenia in September whereas the United States and the European Union called on Azerbaijan to withdraw its troops from the Armenian territory seized by its forces during border clashes two months ago.
Furthermore, during a virtual conference with other CSTO leaders on October 28, the authoritarian leader of Belarus, Alexander Lukashenko, bluntly rejected Armenia’s appeal for military assistance, opposing any CSTO intervention in the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict.
The participants of today’s protest, therefore, described it unacceptable that Yerevan should host the leaders of the CSTO, including Putin.
“Putin, Lukashenko and others should not have set foot in this country,” Ioannisian said.
In his public remarks earlier this week Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev boasted that Baku has more friends in the CSTO than Armenia.
Armenian political analyst Ruben Mehrabian, who also participated in the protest in Yerevan’s Freedom Square, said he partly disagreed with the Azerbaijani leader. “Aliyev is wrong. And his mistake is that Armenia has no friends in the CSTO and cannot have any,” he emphasized.
Meanwhile, a group of Ukrainians wrapped in their national flags protested Russia’s ongoing war of aggression against Ukraine. They held posters with the names of Ukrainian cities and towns where they said occupying Russian forces committed war crimes during the invasion lasting since February.