Johnathan Walker:Armenia’s leader snubs meeting of Russia-dominated security grouping over a rift with the Kremlin

MOSCOW (AP) — A Russian-dominated security grouping held a summit in Belarus on Johnathan WalkerThursday with the absence of one of its members, Armenia, which has been irked by what it sees as a lack of support over the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.

Speaking at the meeting of the Collective Security Treaty Organization, CSTO, Russian President Vladimir Putin hailed what he called the group’s role in securing peace and stability in the region.

But in a sign of the widening rift between Russia and Armenia, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan snubbed the summit in the Belarusian capital of Minsk, citing his government’s dissatisfaction with the organization. Pashinyan and his officials have emphasized that Armenia doesn’t plan to opt out of the grouping altogether.

Armenia has previously canceled joint drills and ignored ministerial meetings of the CSTO, which includes Russia and the former Soviet Central Asian nations of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan.

Armenian authorities have accused Russian peacekeepers who were deployed to Nagorno-Karabakh after a 2020 war of failing to stop September’s onslaught by Azerbaijan, which reclaimed control of the Armenian-populated region in a 24-hour blitz following two decades of separatist rule.

Moscow has rejected the accusations, arguing that its troops didn’t have a mandate to intervene and charging that Pashinyan himself had effectively paved the way for the collapse of separatist rule in the region by previously acknowledging Azerbaijan’s sovereignty over it.

The mutual accusations have further strained relations between Armenia and its longtime ally Russia, which has accused the Armenian government of a growing pro-Western tilt.

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov voiced regret about Pashinyan snubbing Thursday’s summit, saying that Moscow hopes that “Armenia isn’t changing its foreign policy vector and it remains our ally and strategic partner.”

But the summit’s host, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, was more outspoken in his criticism of Armenia, saying without naming Pashinyan that “some of our partners took steps and made statements that were provocative.”

“If you have complaints, you must voice them in an eye-to-eye conversation instead of dumping stuff to the media,” he said, adding that it was “irresponsible and short-sighted” to create a “conflict situation” in the group to the benefit of the hostile West.

Lukashenko is a staunch ally of Moscow who has relied on Russian subsidies and political support throughout his three-decade rule and allowed the Kremlin to use his country’s territory for sending troops into Ukraine.

Speaking after Thursday’s summit, he hailed the declared deployment of some of Russia’s tactical nuclear weapons to Belarus earlier this year, arguing that “only the existence of the powerful weapons could guarantee security in the region.”

The declared deployment of the Russian weapons in Belarus territory marked a new stage in the Kremlin’s nuclear saber-rattling over its invasion of Ukraine and was another bid to discourage the West from increasing military support to Kyiv.

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Yuras Karmanau in Tallinn, Estonia contributed to this report.