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Armenian Foreign Minister To Skip CIS Gathering
Armenian Foreign minister Ararat Mirozyan (file photo)
April 10, 2024
By RFE/RL's Armenian Service
Armenian Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan will not attend an upcoming meeting of his counterparts from the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), a Foreign Ministry spokesperson has announced.
The session of the CIS Council is scheduled to be held in Minsk on April 12.
The CIS is a Moscow-led grouping of former Soviet republics that was set up immediately after the disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1991.
Georgia and Ukraine, both victims of Russian aggression, have already quit the CIS while Moldova, having suspended its de facto participation, has said it plans to quit the organization by the end of this year.
Armenia has long been a close ally of Russia but has in recent months taken steps to distance itself from that alliance, apparently angered by what it saw as a lack of support from Moscow during the 2020 war in Nagorno-Karabakh.
The Armenian government has also criticized Russian peacekeepers deployed to Nagorno-Karabakh after the 2020 war for failing to stop Azerbaijan's lightning offensive in September 2023 that ended with Baku regaining control over the breakaway region that for three decades had been under ethnic Armenians' control.
Mirzoyan's decision to skip the CIS gathering comes several days after Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian held a trilateral meeting with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken in Brussels. The meeting was focused on efforts to increase Armenia's resilience and diversify its economy, which is heavily dependent on Russia.
Russia denounced the Brussels meeting, accusing the West of trying to oust it from the South Caucasus.
Russian news agency TASS said that Armenia will be represented by a deputy minister at the meeting in Minsk, but the information could not be independently confirmed.
Armenia already lowered the level of its participation in CIS gatherings last week, when it sent a peacekeeping brigade commander to a meeting of CIS chiefs of staff in Moscow.
Copyright © Apr 2024. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 conncwsecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036. http://www.rferl.org
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