Armenia appealed to the CSTO for help after Azerbaijani troops reportedly crossed several sections of the border and advanced a few kilometers into Armenian territory on May 12-14. It asked the alliance of six ex-Soviet states to invoke Article 2 of its founding treaty which requires the CSTO to discuss a collective response to grave security threats facing its member states.
The foreign ministers of Armenia, Russia, and four other CSTO member states discussed the border dispute when they met in Tajikistan later in May. They expressed concern over the tensions but did not issue joint statements in support of Armenia.
Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian chided the bloc afterwards for not publicly siding with his country. He warned that the Armenian government could turn to the UN Security Council “if it turns out that the instruments of the CSTO or the treaty on the joint Russian-Armenian military contingent are not enough to resolve this problem.”
Yerevan has not taken such action despite Baku’s continuing refusal to withdraw Azerbaijani troops from the contested border sections.
CSTO Secretary General Stanislav Zas said on Saturday that the border standoff is not serious enough to require the CSTO’s military intervention.
“One has to understand that the CSTO’s potential is used only in the event of foreign aggression [against member states,]” Zas told journalists. “In this case we are dealing with a border incident. Thank God, there are no casualties, no gunshots. This is a border incident … and we are in favor of resolving it peacefully.”
Ruben Rubinian, the chairman of the outgoing Armenian parliament’s committee on foreign relations, described Zas’s remarks as “weird.”
Rubinian insisted that the Azerbaijani troop movements violated Armenia’s territorial integrity. He also argued that one Armenian soldier was killed and six others captured by Azerbaijani troops in late May.
“The CSTO is obliged to react to not only a direct aggression or hostilities but also to threats to a CSTO member state’s territorial integrity, sovereignty and security,” Rubinian told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service on Sunday. “I believe nobody can dispute the fact that the existing situation on our borders fully corresponds to Article 2.”
“We will continue to work with our CSTO partners in this direction and I think that representatives of our relevant agency will be in touch with our partners in the coming days,” he said.
Armen Grigorian, the secretary of Armenia’s Security Council, spoke with Zas by phone on Monday. Grigorian was cited by his office as expressing concern over the Belarusian official’s comments and saying that the border standoff is not a mere “incident” because Azerbaijan is occupying Armenian territory in an attempt to annex it.
Grigorian also told Zas that the CSTO Secretariat in Moscow should send a fact-finding mission to Armenia that would look into the situation on the ground.
Lieutenant-General Artak Davtian, the chief of the Armenian army’s General Staff, said on June 22 that Russia will likely deploy border guards in Gegharkunik, one of the two Armenian provinces where Azerbaijani forces took up new positions nearly two months ago. Russian officials have not commented on that so far.
It is also not clear whether Russian military personnel could also be dispatched to a disputed border section in the other affected province, Syunik. Moscow already deployed soldiers and border guards elsewhere in Syunik following the Armenian-Azerbaijani war stopped by a Russian-brokered ceasefire in November.