Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said that several years ago, Armenia had a security guarantor “written on paper,” but the country abandoned that guarantor and became a state.
He made the remarks in parliament while responding to a question from opposition MP Kristine Vardanyan regarding international security guarantors.
“We abandoned that security guarantor and became a state. Because throughout the entire period of that guarantor’s guarantees, we were not a state. We did not even realize that we were not a state.”
Pashinyan added that Armenia currently has peace and that if the country does not become the guarantor of its own peace, no one else will.
“Today we have peace. And we have understood one thing: if we are not the guarantor of our own peace, no one else will be, because our peace is needed only by us. No one else needs our peace more than we do,” Pashinyan said.
In February 2024 it became known that Armenia had frozen its participation in the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO). On April 12, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said Armenia does not rule out leaving the alliance if the CSTO fails to clearly define the boundaries of its responsibility zone in Armenia.
In response, the CSTO stated that its responsibility zone is considered the sovereign territory of Armenia.
On May 8, Armenia’s Foreign Ministry announced that the country would refuse to participate in financing the CSTO. On June 14, speaking in parliament, Pashinyan said leaving the organization could become the next logical step.
On September 18, the prime minister added that relations between Armenia and the CSTO had reached an irreversible stage, stressing that the alliance had created threats to Armenia’s sovereignty. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov responded that the CSTO is not a threat but an organization created to ensure the sovereignty of its members.
