Armenia to leave military alliance led by Russia, Pashinyan accused of plotting with Azerbaijan

Armenia will leave the Russian-led military alliance, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan confirmed on Wednesday, accusing members of the bloc of plotting with their enemy Azerbaijan to start a war against Armenia.

For months, Pashinyan has accused the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) of failing to protect Armenia from renewed Azerbaijani aggression, threatening to leave the bloc unless Moscow offers stronger evidence to the contrary, as well as more ties to the United States and The European Union, according to CNN, as reported by N1.

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Armenia and Azerbaijan have fought two wars over the breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh, which Azerbaijan took back in full by force in September.

Russia has traditionally been allied with Armenia, but their relationship has soured in recent months as Moscow's ties to Azerbaijan have deepened.

Addressing parliamentarians in the capital Yerevan, Pashinyan said his country has "frozen" its participation in the CSTO and will leave the bloc the moment Armenia decides to do so.

"We will decide when we will leave, but we will not return," Pashinyan said, as reported by state media Armenpres.

It turned out that the members of the alliance are not fulfilling their contractual obligations, but are planning a war with Azerbaijan against us, he added.

According to CNN, the other members of the bloc are Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, and it was founded in 1992 when the Soviet Union collapsed.

Belarus delivered weapons to Azerbaijan

Politiko writes that Belarus has supplied advanced weapons to Azerbaijan, according to leaked documents that it had access to.

The files shed new light on Armenia's decision to leave the military alliance in what they say is a dramatic U-turn that will weaken Russian President Vladimir Putin's authority among the former Soviet nations.

Armenia is on the verge of a historic turn towards the West, increasingly seeking protection from Europe and NATO, after a decade of relying on Moscow.

The decision by Belarus — a staunch ally of Russia — to supply advanced military hardware to Azerbaijan between 2018 and 2022, giving it an advantage in conflicts with Armenia, will be seen as a bitter betrayal, writes Politiko.

According to CSTO, members are theoretically obliged to defend each other if attacked. Azerbaijan left the previous bloc in 1999.

Belarus, however, actively aided Azerbaijan's armed forces when tensions with Armenia peaked.

The services offered, they write, included the modernization of older artillery equipment and the provision of new equipment used for electronic warfare and unmanned aerial vehicle systems.

"With friends like this"

Artillery and drones have been used extensively in fighting between Azerbaijani and Armenian forces in recent years.

This also happened during the 2020 war over the breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh. The Azerbaijani offensive last September ended the region's de facto independence and triggered a mass exodus of 100.000 residents.

In one of the diplomatic announcements that Politiko has access to, it is stated that Belarusian companies play an active role "in the restoration of the territory of Azerbaijan, as well as in the export of Belarusian goods and services" to the country.

Although he is an ally of Armenia on paper, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko previously described Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev as "our man" and said it would be "wrong" for the CSTO to oppose him.

Aliyev, for his part, said in 2022 that "we have more friends in the CSTO than Armenia."

However, according to experts, it is unlikely that Belarus will act without the tacit support of the Kremlin itself.

"This really shows that with friends like Vladimir Putin, nobody needs enemies," said Ivana Stradner, a researcher at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

It is ridiculous to think that these transfers could have happened without Moscow's knowledge and that Russia could not have stopped them if it wanted to, she added.

"There is no such thing as loyalty when it comes to Moscow – it's all about preserving its own security, even if it's at the expense of its own allies," she said.

What happened in 2023?

Armenia's relations with Russia soured after Azerbaijan retook Nagorno-Karabakh in September in a one-day war and sparked an exodus of virtually the entire Caucasian enclave's ethnic Armenian population, despite the presence of Russian peacekeepers.

Several Karabakh Armenians told CNN at the time that they felt "betrayed" by Russian peacekeepers who "did nothing" to protect them, leaving them with no choice but to leave their homes and flee to Armenia proper.

As more than 100.000 people fled Karabakh, a billboard with the image of Russian President Vladimir Putin watched over them.

About 2.000 Russian peacekeepers were deployed to Karabakh after a 44-day war in 2020, when Azerbaijan retook about a third of the enclave, in an offensive halted with Moscow's mediation, which Azerbaijan will resume three years later.

When Russian security guarantees proved insufficient and Western support only rhetorical, Pashinyan—fearing all-out war with Azerbaijan—refused to send Armenian military support to Karabakh, leaving troops with no choice but to quickly surrender.

Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev has described the return of Karabakh as the "sacred goal" of his mandate.

Despite international condemnation of the Armenian exodus from Karabakh, which officials in Yerevan said amounted to ethnic cleansing, there was hope that this was the tragic cost of ending one of the world's longest-running conflicts.

But a formal peace agreement has not been signed despite months of negotiations.

In April, however, Armenia agreed to return four border villages to Azerbaijan, in what both countries described as a major step toward a peace deal.

Buoyed by the recent progress, Pashinyan said Wednesday that Armenia is "ready to sign a peace agreement within a month," describing the terms of the agreement as "ready to be finalized."

But the attempt to normalize relations with Azerbaijan sparked discontent at home, as protesters accused Pashinyan of making unacceptable concessions to Aliyev. Azerbaijan has also demanded that Armenia change its constitution to remove the reference to Karabakh independence, but Pashinyan has so far resisted those calls.

Protests erupted outside the parliament in Yerevan on Wednesday. Footage shows police using stun grenades to repel the crowd. More than 100 police officers and civilians were injured, Armenpres reported.

The protests were led by Archbishop Bagrat Galstanjan, who had been calling for Pashinyan's resignation for months.

"The problem is very simple: this man has to go, there is no other option," Galstanjan wrote on social media on Wednesday.

While Pashinyan has not yet specified when Armenia will leave the CSTO, the last Russian peacekeepers deployed to Karabakh withdrew on Wednesday, the Azerbaijani Defense Ministry said.