asked whether withdrawal of Russian border guardsKremlin press secretary Dmitry Peskov, formally part of the country’s FSB security service, said it was discussed at the meeting, according to state news wire TASS.
On Sunday, a long convoy of Russian military vehicles was seen leaving Armenia’s border areas and heading towards the capital, Yerevan.
Relations between Moscow and the former Soviet republic have reached historic lows in recent years. The Russian-led CSTO military alliance, of which Armenia is a member, rejected Yerevan’s requests to intervene when Azerbaijan launched an offensive against the country in September 2022.
Pashinyan has also blamed Russian peacekeepers, who were deployed to the Nagorno-Karabakh region that broke away from Azerbaijan after the war in 2020, when Azerbaijani troops launched an offensive to conquer the region, killing more than 100,000 of its ethnic minorities. There was a mass exodus of Armenian residents.
Armenia’s Foreign Ministry said on Wednesday that the country will no longer make financial contributions to the CSTO, effectively ending its membership. Apart from Russia, the military bloc includes Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan.
Instead, Yerevan has conducted joint exercises with US forces, sent humanitarian aid to Ukraine and even hinted that it might Apply for EU membership one day,
Pashinyan has also sought to sign a border demarcation and delimitation agreement with Azerbaijan, offering to hand over four villages in the Tavush region that are part of Azerbaijan’s internationally recognized territory but part of the Soviet Union. It has been occupied by Armenia since the fall.
“The model by which we have problems with our neighbors and we have to invite others to protect us — it doesn’t matter who these others are — is a very weak model,” Pashinyan told POLITICO. ” Last year.