A week after Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian said his country is nearing the "point of no return" with the Russian-led Collective Security Treaty (CSTO), Yerevan has boycotted a key meeting of foreign ministers of the alliance and its troops in the latest training exercises.
CSTO military maneuvers kicked off near Kazakhstan's largest city, Almaty, on September 26 with the participation of Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, and Tajikistan.
The exercises, at least third military drills Armenian armed forces skip since October last year amid an ongoing rift in Yerevan-Moscow relations, started the same day Armenian Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan boycotted the meeting of CSTO foreign ministers on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York City.
Russian-Armenian relations have worsened significantly over the past two years after Yerevan accused Russian troops deployed in and around the breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh of not doing enough to stop a lightning offensive launched by Baku in September 2023.
The clash ended with Azerbaijan's regaining control over the region after it was under ethnic Armenian control for three decades.
SEE ALSO: Armenians, Azerbaijanis Still Dreaming Of Home A Year After Karabakh RecapturedSince last year, Pashinian has said Yerevan's "full reliance on Moscow on security matters was a mistake" and reoriented foreign policy westward, including participation last year in joint Armenian-U.S. military exercises.
That position has only seemed to harden since.
"There is an expression: the 'point of no return,' and if we haven't crossed it, there is a high probability that we will cross that point," Pashinian said last week at the Second Global Armenian Summit in the country's capital.
In May, Armenia stopped financial contributions to the CSTO, widely viewed as a Russian-led counter to NATO.
The same month, Pashinian and Russian President Vladimir Putin agreed that Russian border guards will withdraw from several regions of Armenia though they will continue to be deployed on the Armenian-Turkish and Armenian-Iranian border.
Pashinian and other Armenian leaders have said they are only "diversifying" their foreign and security policies because of what they call Russia’s failure to honor its security commitments to the South Caucasus country.
But Armenia also has boycotted high-level meetings, military exercises, and other activities of the CSTO since.