Armenia could ruin its military ties with Russia if it withdraws from the Russian-led Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) and continues drifting towards the West, according to a senior official in Moscow.
“No matter what the Westerners increasingly courting Yerevan promise, there are no viable alternatives to the CSTO as a mechanism for ensuring Armenia’s security,” Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Galuzin told the TASS news agency in an interview fully published on Wednesday.
“The Armenian leadership seems to want to take advantage of the moment when the West is showing increased interest in strengthening cooperation, including in the security sphere, offering various forms and formats of cooperation. However, rash decisions that will give Westerners full access to national databases and information sensitive to the country’s security … could make it objectively impossible [for Armenia] to return to joint efforts to build a common defense space with Russia and other CSTO allies,” he warned.
Echoing statements regularly made by various Russian officials, Galuzin said that the West’s strategic goal is to weaken Russian presence in other ex-Soviet states, rather than boost their security.
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Over the past year, Armenia has boycotted high-level meetings, military exercises and other activities of the CSTO in what Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan described in February as an effective suspension of its membership in the military alliance of six ex-Soviet states. Pashinyan said afterwards that it could leave the CSTO altogether.