Putin humiliation as country quits ‘Russian NATO’ – and wants to join EU instead | World | News
The Kremlin has been left stunned after a former key ally has said it is planning to quit a Russian-backed military alliance. The Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) is Russia‘s version of NATO, whose members are mostly former Soviet states.
Russia views the organisation as a counterbalance to NATO and an important element of its own security. Like NATO, the CSTO has a collective defence obligation as enshrined in Article 4 of the treaty. This clearly states that any attack against one signatory would be perceived as an attack against all.
In a major blow for Putin, Armenia has now indicated it wants to leave the security bloc. The Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan has said it is likely his country will quit the CSTO, following a peace deal with its neighbour Azerbaijan.
For many years, Armenia held territory inside a region of Azerbaijan known as Nagorno-Karabakh. The Azeris retook the enclave in 2023, after years of conflict between Baku and Yerevan.
Russian solders were deployed to the region to keep the peace, but failed to stop Azerbaijan’s reconquest of the enclave – much to the anger of Armenia’s government. In retaliation, Armenia de facto “froze” its participation of the CSTO in February 2024.
While commenting on recent political developments, Prime Minister Pashinyan told reporters on Wednesday: “It is more likely that we will withdraw from the CSTO than that we will unfreeze our membership.”
In a further blow for the Kremlin, the once staunch Russian ally has also indicated it wants to become a member of the EU.
Russia has a military base in Armenia located in Gyumri, under the command of the Southern Military District. Ukraine‘s intelligence service claimed the Kremlin is actively bolstering its troop presence at the base, as tensions with Yerevan grow.
Those tensions came to a head at the beginning of July, when Yerevan reacted angrily to anti-Armenian propaganda in the Russian media.
Yerevan delivered a diplomatic note to the Kremlin, accusing Russia of orchestrating “openly unfriendly, often hostile propaganda against the Government of the Republic of Armenia .”
