Azerbaijani President Aliyev names condition for Armenia's withdrawal from CSTO

Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev said that Armenia will withdraw from the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) when it gets the go-ahead from Washington. He said this in an interview with VGTRK and RIA Novosti on December 18.

"Armenia is clear where it is going. It has de facto withdrawn from the CSTO. According to our data ... the only reason why they are not leaving de jure is because they haven't gotten the go-ahead from the State Department yet. As soon as they get it, they will come out," he said.

The CSTO is a regional interstate organization, which consists of six countries of the former Soviet Union: Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia and Tajikistan. The CSTO's main goal is to protect its member states from external armed attack.

Block freeze: Armenia is not going to leave the CSTO now

How the Republic's relations with the organization will develop and what Yerevan needs the West for

In November, the Armenian parliament assessed the likelihood of the country's withdrawal from the CSTO. Movses Harutyunyan, spokesman for the Speaker of the Armenian Parliament, said that the Armenian side froze its participation in the CSTO, and their position on the issue remained unchanged.

Before that, in September, Armenia said that the CSTO threatened the country's sovereignty. It was reported that Armenia had come as close as possible to the point of no return in relations with the CSTO because of the organization's failure to respond to the republic's questions.

Later, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that the CSTO protects the sovereignty of member states and in no way threatens Armenia's sovereignty. Peskov noted that the issue of interaction with the CSTO belongs to the sphere of Armenia's sovereign rights to choose strategic and tactical ways of development.

Armenia's relations with the CSTO escalated in November 2022, when the Transcaucasian republic's Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan refused to sign the CSTO draft declaration "On joint measures to assist the Republic of Armenia" due to the lack of a clear political assessment of the situation in Nagorno-Karabakh, according to Pashinyan.