Russia's Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov claimed on Wednesday that the CSTO immediately reacted in 2022 to the Azeri attack on Armenian sovereign territory. The remarks were made at a joint press conference with Armenia's Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan.
Mirzoyan countered Lavrov’s claim, stressing that this is one of the issues where the sides have different interpretations of the events.
Lavrov was asked during the press conference why Russia failed to adequately react in line with its obligations when Azerbaijan attacked Armenia’s Jermuk town in 2022.
“I don’t know what you mean by saying adequate reaction,” Lavrov said. “The reaction stemming from our obligations, which was in line with our contractual obligations with Armenia in the CSTO, happened immediately. A CSTO fact-finding mission was dispatched to the scene to inspect the situation, presented an operative report with concrete and practical proposals, that a CSTO observer mission must be dispatched there to stabilize the situation.
This issue was discussed the same year in October during the Yerevan CSTO summit, and before that the CSTO foreign and defense ministers were working on it, they were editing the proposals that had been presented by the CSTO Secretariat. After all, we achieved consensus around the full text, and it was presented for the discussion of the heads of state, but for various reasons the Armenian side proposed to delay the signing of the finalized text.
We gave consent, and some time later the EU mission [EUMA] was announced, while in Prague it was announced that the belonging of Nagorno-Karabakh would be determined on the basis of the Alma-Ata Declaration, according to which the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast is part of Azerbaijan,” Lavrov said, claiming that this was a surprise for Russia because the status of NK was intentionally omitted from the 9 November 2020 trilateral agreement.
Lavrov claimed at that time the sides had an informal agreement that the Nagorno-Karabakh issue was subject to further agreement of the countries. “But what happened, happened. I don’t dispute our Armenian friends’ chance to criticize anyone’s stance back then, but I said what we did,” Lavrov said.
FM Mirzoyan countered Lavrov’s claims. He said despite Armenia and Russia having mutual-understanding around various issues, the sides have differing interpretations around this particular matter.
“This is one of the cases when our two countries, having mutual understanding and common perception around numerous issues, at the same time have issues where we have differing interpretations of events. The attack in the direction of Jermuk is such an issue, and this issue was a turning point for subsequent developments and stances, including in context of freezing the membership in the CSTO, thus I’d like to take this opportunity and present Armenia’s perceptions and stance around this.
I remember these developments quite well, I was personally part of these developments. We remember that in August 2022 the Russian side presented yet another mediating offer to Armenia and Azerbaijan, surely with good intentions. Armenia agreed to these offers, but Azerbaijan didn’t give a positive stance. By late August we realized that there is no common positive decision, while in mid-September we saw the Azerbaijani military attack in the direction of Jermuk and the violation of Armenia’s territorial integrity and Armenia’s internationally recognized borders. Of course, we notified Russia about this as a bilateral ally, as well as our strategic allies in the CSTO.
The subsequent actions were unsatisfactory for Armenia, and already in October the quadrilateral meeting in Prague took place, where the sides reaffirmed the common perception signed and in force since 1991 that Armenia and Azerbaijan recognize each other’s territorial integrity based on the Alma-Ata Declaration. I’d like to remind once again that by joining the Alma-Ata Declaration the countries, particularly Armenia and Azerbaijan, have accepted that they recognize each other’s borders and territorial integrity within the framework of the borders that existed during the collapse of the Soviet Union,” the Armenian FM said.
Speaking about the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, Mirzoyan said that not a single international partner of Armenia had shared Armenia’s stance over the matter for many years. “Including, I find it noteworthy that Russia has underscored on the highest level that Nagorno-Karabakh belongs to Azerbaijan. Armenia doesn’t dispute this approach, I want to take this occasion and say that Armenia recognizes Azerbaijan’s territorial integrity based on the Alma-Ata Declaration and naturally it expects and has received assurances from Azerbaijan about the recognition of Armenia’s territorial integrity, again based on the Alma-Ata Declaration,” Mirzoyan said.
