Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian also did not rule out such a possibility on Friday one day after boycotting a summit of the leaders of Russia and other CSTO member states held in Minsk. He again accused the CSTO of not honoring its security obligations to Armenia.
“There is a defined situation in which we would definitely leave [the CSTO,]” Gevorg Papoyan, the deputy chairman of Civil Contract’s governing board, told journalists. “We don’t have that situation yet.”
“But there is also a situation where we would definitely participate in those [CSTO] meetings. There is no such situation either,” he said, alluding to an effective freeze on Armenia’s participation in the alliance’s activities.
Papoyan did not specify those “situations.” Nor did he say if Pashinian’s government wants to obtain security guarantees from Western powers before officially reorienting Armenia’s towards the United States and the European Union.
The Russian Foreign Ministry accused Yerevan of planning such a reorientation in late September as tensions between the two longtime allies rose further following Azerbaijan’s military offensive in Nagorno-Karabakh which Moscow did not prevent, stop or even condemn.
In recent months, Pashinian has repeatedly said that the alliance with Russia cannot guarantee Armenia’s national security. His refusal to attend the CSTO summit in Minsk stoked speculation about the South Caucasus state’s imminent exit from the alliance.
Alen Simonian, the Armenian parliament speaker and another senior Civil Contract member, said last week that he will not attend an upcoming session of the CSTO’s Parliamentary Assembly.