YEREVAN (Azatutyun) — Armenia will not send its representatives to another military exercise conducted by the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), a Russia-led bloc of six former Soviet nations from which Yerevan has sought to distance itself lately.
Units of special forces from CSTO-member states, also including Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan, will gather in Russia’s Siberian city of Novosibirsk on August 14 for three-day drills codenamed Cobalt-2024.
Organizers did not mention Armenia among the participants of the planned exercise at the Rosgvardiya training center with the stated purpose of improving cooperation among special forces units of the participating nations.
Armenia has been boycotting all CSTO events for the past two years or so after accusing the Russian-led military alliance of failing to defend its territorial integrity in border clashes with Azerbaijan in September 2022.
Yerevan rejected the CSTO proposal to deploy its observers along the border until the bloc explicitly recognized the fact of the Azerbaijani invasion and occupation of hundreds of square kilometers of sovereign Armenian territory.
Earlier this year Armenian Prime Minister Pashinyan said that Yerevan had “frozen” its membership in the CSTO and could quit it altogether unless it changed its position on the Armenian-Azerbaijani dispute. He also said that two members of the alliance had helped Azerbaijan prepare for the 2020 war in Nagorno-Karabakh, without naming them. Pashinyan is believed to have referred to Russia and Belarus.
