Minsk calls for restricting Armenia’s access to CSTO documents

It would be advisable to restrict Armenia’s access to classified CSTO documents, Maxim Ryzhenkov, Belarus’s foreign minister, said.

Earlier, participants in the CSTO summit in Moscow decided to strip Armenia of its voting rights in the organization, as well as of the right to appoint its representatives to senior positions in the CSTO. In 2024, Armenia announced it was “freezing” its participation, although the organization’s charter makes no provision for this, and stopped paying membership dues.

“I am sure that access will be restricted to certain documents that are, generally speaking, classified,” the minister said on the Belarus 1 TV channel.

He questioned the need to give “such a pseudo-ally, on issues of this kind, full access today to documentation of a rather classified nature.” The minister explained that, speaking hypothetically, classified information could be used in ways that do not entirely serve the interests of the countries that genuinely intend to develop this integration association “in a good, united and consolidating spirit.”

Ryzhenkov stressed that it was not the people but Armenia’s top leadership that had changed its attitude toward the country’s participation in integration structures — the CSTO and the EAEU. He described this as “passive participation,” in which Armenia takes from these associations whatever benefits it.

“It is the use of certain knowledge and certain advantages that come from participating in these associations for one’s own selfish interests, which do not coincide with the goals of the integration associations, because we want to be strong, we want to show solidarity on political issues, on economic issues and on security issues,” the Belarusian minister said.

“What we get is a situation like this: ‘I’ll pick from you what interests me — gas and oil prices, the transportation of my goods to the end consumer — the rest doesn’t concern us.’ Such an attitude could not go unnoticed,” Ryzhenkov stressed, commenting on the decision regarding Armenia adopted at the CSTO summit in Moscow.