Andrey Klintsevich: If Armenia follows the path of quitting the CSTO, this will definitely provoke a new round of armed confrontation

Speaking with Alpha News, Russian political scientist Andrey Klintsevich commented on the statement by Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan that Armenia cannot develop defense cooperation only with Russia as it did before.

According to the expert, Armenia is executing an order from the European Union.

“Europe will now develop the arms market and convert Armenia to its technologies and standards, because it will be very difficult to change later. That is, you are either on NATO standards, or on Soviet, CIS, or, relatively speaking, on Russian ones. So, in the near future, Armenia, of course, will seek protection from France and from the European Union, but in the conditions of modern geopolitics, the policies of Turkey, Azerbaijan, and Iran, and the membership of Armenia in the Eurasian Economic Union, it is impossible to look for a third-party organization that will protect you from your own neighbors. This needs to be done only in a space in which Azerbaijan and Turkey will listen to some opinion, and they listen to Russia. Europe is a destructive factor in this region.

Europe just wants to put everyone at odds with each other so that the North-South transport corridor through the territory of Azerbaijan, further to Iran, and then to India and Pakistan, is stopped. This is one of the key factors of the European Union. Therefore, Armenia will be used, like Ukraine, as a kind of battering ram, whose task will simply be to destroy the current situation. All this will affect the well-being of the citizens of Armenia and Armenia’s relations with its neighbors. My prediction is that if Armenia follows the path of quitting the CSTO, this will definitely provoke a new round of armed confrontation with its neighbors,” Klintsevich said.

“It is worth noting that the key issue for Azerbaijan now is unimpeded access to Nakhichevan; this issue has not been resolved. So, most likely, Baku will try to resolve this issue soon. There is, of course, an alternative option to create such a corridor through the territory of Iran, but this is unacceptable for Azerbaijan because this, figuratively speaking, is a short leash by which it can be pulled,” Klintsevich concluded.