Armenia had a CSTO guarantee. Nagorno-Karabakh was outside it.

Armenia had a security bloc to call. Its prime minister said the call had not produced the protection Armenia expected.

In an interview broadcast on 22 February 2024, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said Armenia had frozen its participation in the Russia-led Collective Security Treaty Organisation, or CSTO, because the bloc had failed the country. Reuters reported his remarks the following day. Pashinyan said the treaty had not fulfilled its objectives for Armenia, “particularly in 2021 and 2022”, and that Armenia had “in practical terms frozen” its participation.

Those are Armenia’s judgements, not an agreed finding by every CSTO member. The retrieved Reuters report does not provide a full list of Armenia’s requests for assistance, the dates of each border incident or a formal CSTO decision rejecting them. It records the gap between what Yerevan expected from the treaty and what its government said it received.

The dates matter. Pashinyan’s statement in February 2024 referred back to 2021 and 2022. It was not a report that Armenia had left the organisation during either of those years. The case record is dated 13 September 2022, when the security dispute was still being framed around assistance during border fighting. Reuters’ later report describes the political consequence of that dissatisfaction, not a single decision made at the border.

The CSTO is a Russia-led security organisation whose other post-Soviet members include Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. Armenia’s membership created an expectation of collective assistance, but the retrieved material does not settle the treaty’s legal application to every incident. Nor does it establish that all members interpreted the organisation’s obligations in the same way.

Pashinyan’s language was deliberately short of a formal departure. He said participation had been frozen in practical terms and that what came next remained open. Reuters also reported that there was no discussion at that point about closing Russia’s military base in Armenia, because the base was governed by different treaties. A freeze in participation, a suspension of cooperation and withdrawal from the treaty are separate events.

The political setting was deteriorating. Pashinyan had said Armenia could no longer rely on Russia to ensure its defence needs and had suggested that CSTO membership was under review. Armenia’s relations with Russia had soured after Azerbaijan’s military recaptured Nagorno-Karabakh in September 2023, prompting more than 100,000 ethnic Armenians to flee into Armenia. That later development formed part of Reuters’ background to the 2024 remarks, but it should not be projected backward as the sole cause of the 2021 and 2022 complaints.

The report also records a dispute with Azerbaijan. Pashinyan said Azerbaijan was not adhering to principles needed for a long-term peace treaty and suggested that Baku was preparing another attack. Azerbaijan called those allegations unfounded and accused Pashinyan of raising regional tension and damaging the peace process. Those statements are relevant to the security context, but they are not proof that the CSTO caused a particular battlefield outcome.