The President of Belarus, Alexander Lukashenko, called the Prime Minister of Armenia, Nikol Pashinyan, to discuss the upcoming Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) summit that will take place in Minsk, the capital of Belarus, on November 23.
However, The Armenian Prime Minister informed the President of Belarus that he couldn’t attend the session and hoped his CSTO colleagues would understand his decision. A statement from the Prime Minister’s office confirmed the call’s details.
“Prime Minister Pashinyan told the President of Belarus that he won’t be able to attend and expressed hope that CSTO partners will treat this decision with understanding,” the Armenian government said on its Telegram channel.
It is not the first time the Armenian PM has skipped a CSTO summit. PM Pashinyan missed the CIS Summit in Bishkek earlier.
After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Armenia aligned with Russia and became a member of the Russia-led military alliance, the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO). Armenia found essential to its security participation in the CSTO.
However, their relations began to deteriorate after the 2018 Armenian Revolution, which consisted of pro-democracy, anti-government protests led by the actual PM Nikol Pasinyan. Since 2020, due to the developments in the Nagorno-Karabakh War and the 2023 Azerbaijani offensive in Nagorno-Karabakh, Armenia has moved a significant distance from the Kremlin.
Prime Minister Pasinyan tried to bring his country closer to the EU and the Western democracies. In 2023, he met, among others, with the European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and the President of France, Emmanuel Macron. He also addressed MEPs in the European Parliament’s hemicycle in Strasbourg on Tuesday, October 17.
