Pashinyan describes Armenia’s previous CSTO-centered security model as ‘primitive’

Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan has described Armenia’s pre-2022 security model, centered on the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), as “primitive,” saying the September 2022 events exposed the need for a fundamentally new approach to the country’s security.

“The events of September 2022 made it clear that if we do not have a new edition of thinking, we will lose the Republic of Armenia,” he said on Thursday at the Comprehensive Security & Resilience 2026 international conference, organized by Yerevan-based think tank WGSA. “We were five minutes away from losing the statehood and sovereignty of the Republic of Armenia. Security is a multilayered phenomenon. The security formula that existed until 2022 was primitive in essence because it consisted of one sentence: the CSTO will ensure our security. This sentence had no preamble and no continuation. If, for example, we go and retrospectively analyze the press of 1994-2022, we will see thousands of expert assessments that the CSTO would not ensure the security of the Republic of Armenia when necessary. The question is why all those assessments did not lead to conclusions,” the Prime Minister said.

PM Pashinyan emphasized that Armenia had followed a path for decades, knowing clearly where it would lead.

The Pashinyan administration froze Armenia’s participation in the CSTO in early 2024, citing the bloc’s failure to fulfill its security obligations toward Armenia and provide an assessment of the Azerbaijani attacks of 2022.