Armenian Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan will not attend an upcoming meeting of his post-Soviet counterparts, a Foreign Ministry spokesperson confirmed on Tuesday.
The session of the Council of Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) countries is scheduled to be held in Minsk, Belarus, on April 12.
The CIS is a loose organization of a dozen former Soviet countries set up immediately after the disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1991.
In the past decades Georgia and Ukraine quit the Moscow-led organization because of Russian aggressions against their countries. And Moldova, having suspended its de facto participation, has said it plans to quit the organization by the end of 2024.
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Mirzoyan’s decision to skip the CIS gathering comes several days after Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan held a trilateral meeting with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken in Brussels. The meeting was focused on efforts to increase Armenia’s resilience and diversify its economy heavily dependent on Russia.
Russia denounced the Brussels meeting, accusing the West of trying to oust it from the South Caucasus.
According to Russian news agency TASS, at the Minsk meeting of CIS foreign ministers Armenia will be represented at the level of a deputy minister.
RFE/RL’s Armenian Service could not immediately verify this information from the Armenian Foreign Ministry.
Armenia already lowered the status of its participation in CIS gatherings when it sent a peacekeeping brigade commander to a meeting of chiefs of armed forces’ general staffs of CIS member states in Moscow last week.
In 2022, Armenia effectively suspended its participation in the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) that also includes Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan after accusing the Russia-led defense bloc of failing to respond to the security challenges facing Armenia, in particular, Azerbaijan’s incursions into sovereign Armenian territory in 2021-2022.
The Armenian government has also accused Russian peacekeepers deployed to Nagorno-Karabakh in 2020 of failing to stop Azerbaijan’s lightning offensive in September 2023 that ended with Baku regaining control over the region that for three decades was under ethnic Armenians’ control.
Armenia’s parliamentary opposition has taken issue with the approach of the Pashinyan government to boycotting post-Soviet gatherings.
Armen Rustamian, a lawmaker with the opposition Hayastan faction, said on Tuesday that not participating in the CIS meeting at the level of the minister is a continuation of confrontation with Russia.
He claimed that the West had demanded that Armenia become “part of the anti-Russian front.”
“This is obviously changing allegiances during a war. They run from one trench to another during battle. We also see that there are many issues to be dissatisfied with regarding the activities of the CSTO and our strategic partners, but behaving in the manner of an offended person is incongruous with normal political processes and statesmanship,” Rustamian said.
Armenian leaders have not officially announced immediate plans to quit either the CSTO or the Eurasian Economic Union, a trade grouping of five former Soviet nations, including Armenia, Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan. But Pashinyan and members of his political team have made a case for a more balanced foreign policy to boost Armenia’s international standing in terms of both economy and security.
Hakob Badalian, a Yerevan-based political analyst, has doubted the wisdom of taking a “confrontational” way of doing that.
“We are ready to deepen our relationship with the West and that is very important. But the question is whether we need to do that by taking a confrontational path in our relations with Russia. Yes, there are problems, but I think that these problems should be discussed,” he said.
Meanwhile, pro-government lawmaker Vagharshak Hakobian downplayed the political implications behind Armenia’s decision to send a deputy foreign minister to the CIS gathering. He put it down to an “organizational issue.”
“This does not mean that anyone wants to have confrontation with anyone. On the contrary, this is a working process, and we do participate in the CIS meeting,” he said.
Hakobian, who is deputy head of the Armenian parliament’s committee on Eurasian integration, said that Armenia has no intention of suspending its cooperation with the CIS. “The Republic of Armenia adheres to all of its international agreements,” he said.