Hayk Hovhannisyan, #CivilNetCheck
Speaking in Yerevan on May 21, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov asserted that the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), of which Armenia is a member, had immediately responded to Azerbaijan’s September 2022 aggression against Armenia and that an agreement had been reached on providing assistance by October. According to him, “the Armenian side proposed to postpone that decision.” He went on to claim that the EU mission was announced later in November 2022, connecting this to Armenia’s recognition of Nagorno-Karabakh as Azerbaijani territory at a Prague summit.
However, a detailed examination of the timeline reveals significant inaccuracies in Lavrov’s account, which mirror his similar misrepresentations in March 2024.
What happened in 2022
On September 13, 2022, Azerbaijan launched a large-scale attack and invaded Armenian territory. Armenia’s government immediately appealed to both Russia and the CSTO for assistance under the organization’s collective defense obligations.
On September 15, two days after the attack, a CSTO Joint Staff operational group arrived in Armenia for a short-term monitoring mission. Rather than military forces, the group was a limited assessment team, and its leader, Anatoly Sidorov, made clear that military intervention was off the table. He went on to state there was no question of the CSTO using military force or deploying peacekeepers “not yesterday, not today, and not in the near future.”
Contrary to Lavrov’s claim that the EU mission was arranged in November, the agreement to send European Union civilian monitors was actually reached much earlier. On October 6, during a quadrilateral meeting in Prague between the leaders of Armenia, Azerbaijan, the European Council, and France, the parties agreed to deploy EU monitors to Armenia.
By October 12, when the Armenian and Russian foreign ministers met, Armenian Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan told Lavrov that Armenia was awaiting decisions from the CSTO and Russia on sending observers, while simultaneously informing him that the European Union had already decided that morning to send a fact-finding group to Armenia.
Lavrov responded that the CSTO was ready to send observers and that Armenia needed to convene an extraordinary CSTO Council session. Mirzoyan replied that Armenia had attempted to do so but failed due to the unavailability of its CSTO allies.
The EU Council formally decided on October 17 to send a civilian observation mission to Armenia, consisting of up to 40 monitors. These observers began their work on October 26.
CSTO’s failure to act
The CSTO’s reluctance to provide meaningful assistance became fully apparent in late November 2022. The Russian-led military alliance, established in 1992 and including Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan, has increasingly been viewed by Armenia as ineffective in providing security guarantees.
During a November 23 joint session of CSTO member countries’ ministerial council in Yerevan, the organization failed to fully agree on a project to provide assistance to Armenia.
In a leaked footage from the meeting, Lavrov acknowledged that the decision on providing assistance could be suspended, contradicting his current claims that the project had been fully agreed upon. The rejected document would have included deployment of an observation mission and some military-technical assistance, though without a specific list of what would be provided.
The following day, November 24, at a meeting of CSTO leaders, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan refused to sign a CSTO document, citing the absence of a political assessment of Azerbaijani aggression and unclear boundaries of CSTO responsibilities in Armenia.
Historical Pattern of CSTO Inaction
This was not the first time the CSTO failed to respond to Azerbaijani aggression against Armenia. In May 2021, following Azerbaijan’s 44-day war victory in 2020, Azerbaijani forces invaded Armenian territory in several directions. Armenia officially appealed to the CSTO for help, but received a response more than a month later stating that the incident was a “border clash” that did not fall under the organization’s collective defense provisions.
Azerbaijan, backed by Turkey and possessing superior military capabilities, has continued to pressure Armenia through border incursions and territorial claims. In July 2021, Armenia proposed deploying a CSTO monitoring mission on the Armenian-Azerbaijani border, but the organization did not respond to the proposal. Similarly, after Azerbaijani armed forces attacked Syunik province in November 2021, there was again no official response from the CSTO.
The documented timeline shows that Armenia sought EU assistance only after the CSTO proved unwilling or unable to provide meaningful support.
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