Armenia said on Wednesday that it has stopped making financial contributions to the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) after freezing its membership in the Russian-led military alliance.
“Armenia will refrain from signing up to the November 23, 2023 decision ‘On the CSTO budget for 2024’ and, thereby, from participating in the financing of the organization’s activities,” the Armenian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, Ani Badalyan, told the Sputnik news agency.
At the same time, Badalian said that Yerevan will not block other member states from doing so.
Over the past year or so, Armenia has boycotted high-level meetings, military exercises and other activities of the CSTO in what Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian described in February as an effective suspension of its CSTO membership. The premier repeatedly said afterwards that he could pull his country out of the alliance of six ex-Soviet states altogether unless it addresses Yerevan’s concerns.
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The Russian Foreign Ministry stressed last week Armenia formally remains a full-fledged member of the CSTO and must therefore “fulfill appropriate obligations” to the organization.
Armenia officially asked Russia and other CSTO member states for support after Azerbaijan’s offensive military operations launched along the Armenian-Azerbaijani border in September 2022. It has repeatedly accused them of ignoring the request. Moscow denies that.
The threats to leave the CSTO reflect Yerevan’s deepening rift with Moscow. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov charged in March that Pashinian’s administration is “leading things to the collapse of Russian-Armenian relations” at the behest of the West. Pashinian and other Armenian leaders say that they are only “diversifying” their foreign and security policy because of what they call Russia’s failure to honor its security commitments to the South Caucasus country.
