Armenia previously insisted that the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) ensure the protection of certain sections of the Armenian-Azerbaijani border, but the lack of an agreed and delimited border did not enable the organization’s zones of responsibility to be clearly defined, Russian President Vladimir Putin said, TASS reports.

According to him, the Armenian side had raised the issue of protecting certain sections of Armenia’s border with Azerbaijan, but the other CSTO member states pointed out, first of all, the need to clearly delimit the state border between Armenia and Azerbaijan.

“As for the CSTO, there is also its own history here. Nikol Vovayevich [Pashinyan, Prime Minister of Armenia], (...) he believed that the CSTO should cover certain sections of the border there. And all CSTO members say: 'No, well, that is a completely different matter—to cover certain sections of the border.' There is no delimitation of the border. There is no treaty on the border; there never was. And there is none now. Azerbaijan believes that the border runs along this section, while Armenia believes it runs along that one. There are many issues that indeed require expert assessment,” Putin said.

The Russian president noted that before the signing of the relevant documents, the questions of how the CSTO can build relations along the Armenian-Azerbaijani border remain open.

Putin added that he expects to discuss this topic with Pashinyan in Moscow.

Earlier, the Russian president invited the Armenian prime minister to the Russian capital to discuss in detail Yerevan’s relations with the CSTO, the Eurasian Economic Union, and the European Union.