In response, Pashinyan stated that there is a mechanism for expelling a member from the CSTO. If the member states choose to expel Armenia, “we will have to accept that decision as a fact.”<\/p>\n
The day before the briefing, during the CSTO session, Sergey Lavrov addressed Armenia’s unpaid membership dues.<\/p>\n
The investigation conducted by Verified revealed that Lavrov’s speech was misrepresented. He did not discuss the possibility of expelling Armenia from the CSTO. It is important to note that this error occurred not only during the Prime Minister’s briefing but also aired on Shant and Public TV.<\/p>\n
Who and how disseminated the claim<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
On June 14, during the Great Debate on Public Television, the presenters repeated this narrative multiple times.<\/p>\n
In particular, Tatev Danielyan, while addressing the speaker, noted<\/a> that “Lavrov has stated that the CSTO must discuss whether Armenia should remain a member of the organisation.”<\/p>\n
Petros Ghazaryan stated<\/a> that Russia has announced Armenia’s commencement of the process to withdraw from the CSTO.<\/p>\n
When Boris Murazi, a member of the Armenia bloc, inquired if it was about the EAEU, Tatev Danielyan clarified, “No, it’s regarding the CSTO. Aren’t you familiar with Lavrov’s statement?”<\/p>\n
During the June 13 broadcast of the program Public Discussion with Tatev Danielyan, Danielyan restated<\/a> the same claim.<\/p>\n
This statement was also made during the Perspective program aired on June 12 on Shant TV. The host commented, “Let’s return to the statement made by the CSTO regarding Armenia’s membership fees. In fact, Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov announced this. Therefore, there may be discussions about the potential expulsion of Armenia from the CSTO.”<\/p>\n
Political scientist Stepan Grigoryan, who was a guest on the program, stated that the current situation exemplifies classic blackmail and asserted that there is no chance they would expel Armenia from the CSTO.<\/p>\n
What did Sergey Lavrov actually say?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
On June 10, the regular meeting of the CSTO Council of Foreign Ministers was held<\/a> in Kazan, but the Republic of Armenia did not attend.<\/p>\n
During the press conference following the session, Sergey Lavrov, answering a journalist’s question about what mechanisms would be implemented if Armenia decided to withdraw from the CSTO, noted<\/a> that Armenia officially remains a full member of the CSTO.<\/p>\n
He mentioned that Armenia’s debt to the CSTO budget has been accumulating for over two years, and they are considering invoking the relevant article of the charter.<\/p>\n
“On June 7 of this year, the very day of the elections in Armenia, my colleague A.S. Mirzoyan responded to a question about the CSTO by stating, ‘we do not pay membership fees simply because we do not participate,’ this can be considered a direct quote.”<\/p>\n
Today, we discussed how to address the situation. Armenia has accumulated debt to the CSTO budget for over two years. This issue is addressed in the Charter of the Collective Security Treaty Organisation. We agreed to explore the possibility of implementing the relevant article of the CSTO Charter.<\/strong><\/p>\n
Lavrov did not announce Armenia’s expulsion from the CSTO; however, he noted that a debt had accumulated, and they discussed the possibility of invoking the relevant article of the CSTO charter.<\/p>\n
What does the relevant article of the CSTO charter imply?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
According to Article 24 of the CSTO Charter,<\/a> the CSTO budget is formed through distributed financial contributions made by member states, which are approved by the Collective Security Council.<\/p>\n
According to Article 25, if a state fails to pay its membership fee or debt to the organisation for two consecutive years, it will lose its right to vote and its ability to appoint its citizens to positions until the debt is fully repaid.<\/p>\n
Translation: <\/b><\/i> In the event that a member State fails for two years to meet its obligation to pay its dues to the budget of the Organisation, the Council shall take a decision regarding suspension of the right to nominate nationals of that State for quota posts in the Organisation, and also regarding termination of the right to vote in organs of the Organisation until the dues are paid in full.<\/em><\/p><\/div>\n
It is likely that Article 25 is what the Russian Foreign Minister was referring to.<\/p>\n
The process for expulsion from the Organisation is outlined in Article 20 of the charter, which specifies the conditions under which a CSTO member country may be expelled. “In the event of non-fulfilment by a member State of the provisions of this Charter, decisions of the Council or decisions of other organs of the Organisation which have been adopted for implementation, the Council may suspend its participation in the work of the organs of the Organisation.<\/a><\/p>\n
In the event of persistent non-fulfilment of the above-mentioned obligations by a member State, the Council may take a decision to expel such State from the Organisation.<\/p>\n
Decisions on such matters in relation to a member State shall be taken without counting its vote.<\/p>\n
The procedure for suspension of the participation of a member State in the work of the organs of the Organisation or its expulsion from the Organisation shall be determined by the Regulations adopted by the Council,” is written in the Charter.<\/p>\n
Thus, the claims circulating in the Armenian media that Lavrov announced Armenia’s expulsion from the CSTO are false.<\/p>\n
The deterioration of relations between Armenia and the CSTO<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
The Collective Security Treaty was signed<\/a> on May 15, 1992, by the leaders of Armenia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan.<\/p>\n
Article 4 of the Collective Security Treaty (CST) dictates: “that an act of aggression against any member state is treated as an aggression against all signatories. It obligates the remaining members to immediately provide the targeted state with necessary assistance, including military support”<\/p>\n
Armenia has appealed to the Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO) at least twice since 2020, citing aggression against its borders.<\/p>\n
The first appeal<\/a> occurred in 2021 when the Azerbaijani army advanced into the Black Lake area of Syunik province. During a Security Council meeting, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan announced that Armenia was appealing<\/a> to the CSTO. However, no substantial<\/a> assessment or military support was provided in response.<\/p>\n
The second appeal took place in 2022, during Azerbaijan’s September aggression. Armenia again reached out<\/a> to the CSTO and Russia, but once more received no support<\/a>.<\/p>\n
Mukhtar Tleuberdi, the Foreign Minister of Kazakhstan and a member of the Organisation, stated<\/a> on September 14 that the border between Azerbaijan and Armenia is not demarcated, making it difficult to discuss border violations.<\/p>\n
In February 2024, Nikol Pashinyan announced<\/a> that Armenia had frozen its participation in the CSTO due to the organisation’s failure to fulfil its security obligations.<\/p>\n
In March of the same year, the Armenian Foreign Ministry stated<\/a> that Armenia would refrain from financing CSTO activities.<\/p>\n
Factor TV previously reported<\/a> that Russian-language Telegram channels shared this narrative.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Armenian media outlets are circulating a claim that Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov discussed the possibility of Armenia being expelled from the Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO). During a briefing following the Government session on June 11, Civic.am journalist Volodya Hakobyan asked Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan a question. He asked, “There have been reports from Read the full article…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":186,"featured_media":46435,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[212,12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-46501","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured-post","category-verified","author_posts-lusine-voskanyan-en"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/media.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46501","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/media.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/media.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/media.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/186"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/media.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46501"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/media.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46501\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":46513,"href":"https:\/\/media.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46501\/revisions\/46513"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/media.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/46435"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/media.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46501"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/media.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46501"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/media.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46501"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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