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On August 28, Maria Zakharova, spokesperson for the Russian Foreign Ministry, made a number of misleading statements in a post on her official Telegram channel.
Responding to Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan’s statement that the Armenian government is changing the nature of its relations with Russia over the Collective Security Treaty Organization’s failure to fulfill its obligations in 2022, Zakharova wrote:
“Armenia appealed to the CSTO, and contrary to your claims, the organization responded promptly: a monitoring mission was sent to Armenia proper, as stipulated by the organization’s Charter. You personally received the CSTO Secretary General in Yerevan. Do you really think he came to admire the South Caucasus? No, it was a mission by an organization tasked with protecting the territory of its member states. And you did nothing to ensure Armenia’s security — neither legally nor politically.”
Russian senior officials, including Zakharova, have previously claimed that the CSTO responded adequately to the September 2022 attack, selectively presenting or circumventing key facts.
“The CSTO’s reaction to the Jermuk incidents was immediate” – lies by Lavrov in Yerevan
Fact Investigation Platform has previously addressed similar claims on several occasions (1, 2, 3), reconstructing the chronology of events and comparing official statements from the parties involved. This time, FIP.am examined the claims made by Zakharova.
“Responding” does not mean “fulfilling obligations”
In her post, Zakharova responds to Pashinyan’s claim that the CSTO failed to meet its security obligations by saying that the organization “responded promptly” and sent a mission to Armenia.
In essence, this statement does not actually address Pashinyan’s claim. The issue is not whether CSTO representatives came to Armenia. Under Article 4 of the Collective Security Treaty, aggression against one member state, or an armed attack threatening its security, stability, territorial integrity or sovereignty, shall be considered an attack against all member states. At the request of the affected state, the other members are obligated to provide immediate assistance, including military assistance. Therefore, sending a fact-finding mission does not in itself constitute fulfillment of the obligations set out in Article 4.
The Armenian side’s concern is whether the CSTO recognized the events as an attack against a member state and activated the defense mechanisms arising from that recognition.
According to the CSTO’s official statement of September 14, 2022, the mission was tasked with:
- assessing the situation;
- preparing a report for the heads of member states; and
- having a working group monitor the situation.
The decision contained no reference to an invasion by Azerbaijan, aggression, or the occupation of Armenian territory.
Why Pashinyan refused to sign the document proposed by the CSTO
In the same post, Zakharova also claims that at the CSTO summit held in Yerevan in November 2022, the text of a “decision on the deployment of the organization’s mission” had been agreed upon and was ready for signature, but Pashinyan refused to sign it.
“As is well known, you, Nikol Vovaevich, refused. Among other things, the decision provided for immediate political and diplomatic measures to ensure Armenia’s territorial integrity, military-technical assistance, training for border guards, as well as the preparation of a plan for the operational deployment of the CSTO Collective Rapid Reaction Forces on Armenian territory,” Zakharova wrote.
In this case, too, Zakharova fails to provide the full context. At a November 23, 2022 session, Pashinyan publicly explained that he refused to sign the document because it did not contain an explicit political assessment of Azerbaijan’s actions or a demand for Azerbaijani forces to withdraw from Armenia’s sovereign territory.
“It is regrettable that Armenia’s membership in the CSTO did not deter Azerbaijan from taking aggressive actions, and, more so, essentially, to this day we have been unable to adopt a decision on the CSTO’s response to Azerbaijan’s aggression against Armenia. These circumstances are seriously damaging the CSTO’s reputation both inside and outside our country, and I consider this the main failure of Armenia’s chairmanship of the CSTO,” the Armenian prime minister said.
Pashinyan demanded that the CSTO acknowledge Azerbaijan’s aggression, confirm that the invasion had taken place within the CSTO’s area of responsibility, and call for the immediate and unconditional withdrawal of Azerbaijani forces from Armenian territory.
In other words, Armenia did not reject a CSTO mission or assistance as such. Rather, it rejected a draft document that failed to state who had violated Armenia’s territorial integrity and did not call for Azerbaijani forces to withdraw from occupied areas.
The claim about the EU mission Is false
In addition to making manipulative claims, the Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson misrepresented the mandate of the EU mission in Armenia in a sarcastic manner.
“The essential difference from the European observers would have been that the CSTO mission would be authorized not merely to ‘look through binoculars,’ but to directly report on the situation along the border and propose measures to resolve potential crises.”
The first part of Zakharova’s comparison is factually incorrect. Monitoring the situation and reporting on it are precisely among the official functions of EU missions. The temporary mission established in October 2022 was tasked with monitoring, analyzing and reporting on the situation.
The mission’s reports were also intended to support the work of the border delimitation commissions. Meanwhile, the mandate of the European Union Mission in Armenia (EUMA), established in 2023, includes:
- regular patrolling;
- observing and reporting on border incidents;
- ensuring awareness regarding the security-related situation;
- collecting and reporting information on the security of conflict-affected populations;
- implementing confidence-building measures and providing related advice.
Therefore, the claim that “the Europeans simply watch through binoculars, while the CSTO would also have reported” is a sarcastic and misleading false dichotomy.
The claim that “Pashinyan did nothing” is contradicted by evidence
Zakharova’s assertion that Pashinyan “did nothing to ensure Armenia’s security — neither legally nor politically” is not supported by evidence.
The record shows that:
- Armenia appealed to the CSTO and called for collective action to protect its security, sovereignty and territorial integrity.
- In September 2022, Armenia raised the issue at the UN Security Council.
- On September 22, Armenia’s foreign minister invited the EU to deploy a monitoring mission in Armenia.
- In the Prague Statement of October 6, 2022, Armenia and Azerbaijan mutually recognized each other’s territorial integrity and sovereignty, based on the UN Charter and the Alma-Ata Declaration.
- In May 2023, the parties confirmed that they recognize Armenia’s territory as 29,800 square kilometers and Azerbaijan’s as 86,600 square kilometers.
- In April 2024, the border delimitation commissions agreed that the 1991 Alma-Ata Declaration would serve as the basis for delimitation and carried out the first practical delimitation along individual sections of the border.
The one-sided presentation of the Prague Statement
Zakharova refers to the Prague Statement in a selective manner. She writes:
“Let us also recall the other events of that autumn. On October 6, 2022, three weeks after the border clashes, under the auspices of the EU, placing your trust in Brussels and Paris, you signed the Prague Statement, recognizing Azerbaijan’s territorial integrity. You explicitly stated that ‘Azerbaijan’s territory is 86,600 square kilometers, including Nagorno-Karabakh.”
In her post, Zakharova singles out only the fact that Armenia recognized Azerbaijan’s territorial integrity, presenting it as a unilateral concession by Pashinyan.
But the recognition in the Prague Statement was reciprocal. This means that:
- Armenia recognized Azerbaijan’s territorial integrity;
- Azerbaijan recognized Armenia’s territorial integrity and sovereignty;
- the Alma-Ata Declaration was established as the basis for delimitation.
Zakharova completely omits the second part of the Statement. Moreover, she places Pashinyan’s May 2023 statement about the 86,600 square kilometers including Nagorno-Karabakh in the context of the 2022 Prague Statement, creating the impression that the document signed in Prague used that wording. In reality, the text of the Prague Statement does not mention any surface area or Nagorno-Karabakh.
Thus, some of the information cited in Zakharova’s post corresponds to reality: the CSTO did send a mission to Armenia, and Pashinyan did not sign the document on assistance to Armenia presented in November 2022. However, these facts are presented without their broader context.
The CSTO never officially recognized Azerbaijan’s invasion of Armenia, nor did it record a violation of Armenia’s territorial integrity or demand the withdrawal of Azerbaijani forces. The absence of such an assessment was precisely the reason publicly cited by the Armenian side for refusing to sign the document.
At the same time, Zakharova misrepresents the functions of the EU mission, which likewise include monitoring, analyzing and reporting on the situation. Her claim that Pashinyan took no legal or political action to protect Armenia’s territorial integrity is also contradicted by the mutual recognition reached in Prague, the subsequent reaffirmation of the officially recognized territory of Armenia, and the delimitation process launched on the basis of the Alma-Ata Declaration.
Therefore, by selective reference to information, Zakharova equates the CSTO’s limited response with fulfillment of the organization’s obligations as stipulated in the treaty while sidestepping the question of why Armenia rejected the proposed document.
Hasmik Hambardzumyan
