Russia Condemns Armenian Officials’ Trip to Ukrainian Town

Parliament speaker Alen Simonian on Friday dismissed a senior Russian official’s warning that Armenia will cause irreparable damage to its relations with Russia if it moves closer to Western powers and shares “sensitive” information with them.

In an interview with the Russian TASS news agency published on June 5, Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Galuzin suggested that the Armenian government is trying to deepen security ties with the West at the expense of the South Caucasus nation’s traditional alliance with Russia.

“Rash decisions that will give Westerners full access to national databases and information sensitive to the country’s security … could make it objectively impossible [for Armenia] to return to joint efforts to build a common defense space with Russia and other CSTO [Collective Security Treaty Organization] allies,” he warned.

Simonyan, who is a key member of Pashinyan’s political team, countered that Armenia is not seeking to join another military alliance or host Western troops on its territory.

“What information could we convey [to the West?]” he told journalists. “It’s absurd. Enough with such rhetoric about us, enough with threatening us directly and indirectly.”

Simonian also brushed aside Galuzin’s claim that there are no “viable alternatives” to Armenia’s membership in the Russian-led Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO). The Russians, he said, should clarify instead “what obligations they have [to Armenia] both as a CSTO partner and a party to Russian-Armenian treaties.”

Armenian leaders regularly accuse Russia and other CSTO allies of not honoring their security commitments to Armenia. Over the past year, Armenia has boycotted high-level meetings, military exercises and other activities of the CSTO in what Pashinyan described in February as an effective suspension of its membership in the military alliance of six ex-Soviet states. Pashinyan said afterwards that Yerevan could leave the CSTO altogether.