Prime Minister of Armenia

Nikol Pashinyan

said that the country refused to hold the exercises of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) on its territory this year.

"The Minister of Defense of the Republic of Armenia has already informed the Joint Staff of the CSTO in writing that in this situation we do not consider it expedient to conduct such exercises on the territory of the Republic of Armenia.

And these military exercises will not take place in Armenia, at least this year," said Nikol Pashinyan at a press conference in Yerevan.

He is quoted by the Armenpress news agency.

This decision of Armenia is probably related to the situation in Nagorno-Karabakh, which escalated last autumn.

Then Armenia and Azerbaijan exchanged mutual accusations and announced losses among the military.

Russia introduced its peacekeepers.

Earlier, the Ministry of Defense of Russia announced that joint exercises of CSTO peacekeeping troops "Unbreakable Brotherhood-2023" will be held on the territory of Armenia.

The conflict in Karabakh

  • The territorial dispute between Armenia and Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh has been going on since the late 1980s.

    The Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Region, populated mainly by ethnic Armenians, with the support of Armenia, announced its withdrawal from the Azerbaijan SSR, and in September 1991 announced the creation of the "Nagorno-Karabakh Republic" ("Artsakh" in Armenian).

  • During the armed conflict of 1988–1994, 30,000 people died in the region.

    Nagorno-Karabakh and several adjacent regions of Azerbaijan came under the actual control of the armed forces of Armenia.

    As a result, hundreds of thousands of people, mostly ethnic Azerbaijanis, became refugees and forced migrants.

  • "Nagorno-Karabakh Republic" was not officially recognized by any of the UN states, including Armenia itself.

    In 1993, the UN adopted four resolutions demanding the withdrawal of Armenian troops from Karabakh and recognition of the territory as part of Azerbaijan.

  • After another escalation of the situation at the end of September 2020, Azerbaijan returned to its control the areas around Nagorno-Karabakh and took the ancient and symbolically significant city of Shusha.

    The day after the capture of Shusha, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a peace agreement to end the war in the region.

  • According to the agreement, Armenia and Azerbaijan have fixed territories where the troops were stationed at the time of signing the document.

    The Russian peacekeeping mission, which as of July 2021 is about 2,000 people, is located along the contact line.

  • Despite the peace agreement of 2020, skirmishes occur periodically between the armies of the two countries, leading to capture, injuries and deaths.