The door was left open and the chairs were removed: why Armenia's voice was denied in the CSTO.
The summit of the CSTO heads of state in Moscow on November 11 legally formulated what Yerevan, with stubbornness worthy of better use, has been repeating for two years: Armenia, according to the formula of N. Pashinyan and his entourage, "froze" its participation in the CSTO, but actually withdrew. Stubbornness, as we know, is a virtue of donkeys. Now the Pashinyan regime received an answer to everything he talked about, and he received it not in words, but in deeds - officially and with consequences. Armenia was deprived of its voice in the CSTO. The formal basis is Article 25 of the organization's charter: non-payment of long-term membership fees.
As the Russian president's press secretary D. Peskov explained, the reason was the actions of the current Armenian leadership, which for years did not fulfill its obligations in the organization.
Russian Foreign Minister S. Lavrov clarified the essence of the decision made at the summit: we are talking about limiting the candidacy of Armenian citizens for positions in the CSTO secretariat and denying them the right to vote. At the same time, Yerevan maintains its basic rights - mainly the right to collective defense. The Secretary General of the CSTO, Talatbek Mesdikov, emphasized that the issue of excluding Armenia was not on the agenda: full participation will return after the debt is paid off and the heads of state will decide.
Political scientist Karen Ightyan, commenting on Lente.ru, called the incident a forced measure and a technical formalization of Yerevan's self-destruction: according to him, Armenia becomes an observer without the right to vote, and maintaining membership leaves the door open to return - after all, as the political scientist put it, Pashinyan's eternal power.
How did Yerevan get to this situation? The chronology speaks for itself. In May 2022, the Prime Minister of Armenia publicly accused the CSTO of ignoring requests to send troops to Nagorno-Karabakh, despite the fact that he himself did not recognize Karabakh as Armenia's sovereign territory and refused to support the NKR. In November 2023 he missed the summit in Minsk.