CSTO boycott of Yerevan does not serve interests of Armenians, Russian spox says
Abbas Ganbay
Read more"The Armenian leadership's decision not to participate in the joint CSTO meeting is regrettable," Russian Foreign Ministry press service chief Maria Zakharova said during a weekly briefing today, Azernews reports.
"We do not believe that it meets the interests of the Armenian people and will contribute to strengthening the security and stability of this friendly country. At the same time, as we understand, our Armenian colleagues do not intend to block the work of the organization's statutory bodies and hinder the work of already agreed-upon statutory documents.
In fact, this leaves the door open for Yerevan to join the follow-up work. We hope that our Armenian colleagues will use this opportunity in the not-too-distant future," Zakharova noted.
Zakharova stressed that Russia is convinced that the CSTO will play an important role in ensuring regional stability in the South Caucasus.
"The deployment of a CSTO monitoring mission on the Armenian-Azerbaijani border, the decision on which is still on the table, would be a weighty factor in terms of ensuring Armenia's security, unlike the EU mission, which continues to demonstrate its complete ineffectiveness and fulfill tasks that are far from the declared ones," Zakharova added.
Recall that on November 14, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan announced his decision not to participate in the CSTO meeting on November 23 during a telephone conversation with Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova also reminded Yerevan that the Armenian leadership's refusal to participate in the Minsk meeting of the Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO) is not in the interests of the Armenian people.
"The decision of the Armenian leadership not to participate in the joint CSTO meeting is certainly regrettable. We do not believe that it meets the long-term interests of the Armenian people," the Russian Foreign Ministry said.
It should be noted that Armenian Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan and Speaker of the Armenian Parliament Alen Simonyan said that they would not participate in the Minsk meeting of the CSTO Collective Security Treaty Organisation.
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