Armenia will participate in NATO maneuvers, abandoning CSTO exercises

On April 22, the grandiose NATO military exercises “Defender 2023” will begin. They will take place under the leadership of the United States on the territory of 10 European countries and will last 2 months. They will bring together 9,000 service members from the United States and 17,000 service members from 26 European and post-Soviet countries.

Pentagon deputy press secretary Sabrina Singh told a press briefing that Washington wanted to show Europeans its ability to protect them from all kinds of aggression. Therefore, the maneuvers mentioned are focused on the strategic deployment (transfer) of US-based forces and assets (7,000 pieces of equipment), as well as the use of existing US military stocks in Europe (13 000 pieces of equipment) in cooperation with other states. She clarified that among the participants there were countries that are not members of NATO, and three of them are the republics of the former USSR: Moldova, Georgia and Armenia.

Note that Yerevan has been actively showing its displeasure in Moscow lately. Prior to that, CSTO member Armenia defiantly refused to conduct joint “Indestructible Brotherhood – 2023” exercises on its territory, considering them a threat to national security.

The head of the Armenian government, Nikol Pashinyan, and his entourage became very close to anti-Russian circles in Europe and the United States, so much so that they even began to try to discredit the peacekeeping efforts of the Russian President Vladimir Putin. Moreover, the other day, the Constitutional Court of Armenia recognized the obligations enshrined in the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC) as corresponding to the Basic Law of the country, something it has refused to do since 1999. .