At the press conference in Armenian capital Yerevan on Wednesday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov commented on Armenia's dissatisfaction with the actions by the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) in connection with Azerbaijan's military aggression in the direction of Jermuk, Armenia in September 2022. To note, the result of this aggression was the Azerbaijani occupation of the sovereign territory of Armenia.

When asked whether these actions correspond to the current situation, the Russian FM noted that the response within the framework of the CSTO was immediate, a vanguard team of the CSTO mission to familiarize itself with the situation had left for the place, submitted an urgent report with specific practical proposals for sending a CSTO mission to stabilize the situation, and this report had indicated the number of monitors and armament that should have been.

Also, Lavrov recalled that the report was discussed in October in Yerevan—within the framework of the CSTO summit, on the eve of the meeting of heads of state and government—But the Armenian party had proposed to put off the agreed text.

“We agreed. And after some time, in November, the EU [monitoring] mission was announced. And in Prague it was announced that the position on the affiliation of Nagorno-Karabakh is determined on a mutual basis, which was approved by Baku and Yerevan, on the basis of the Alma-Ata Declaration. According to which, NKAO [i.e. the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast] was part of Azerbaijan.

This was quite unexpected because in November 2020, at the height of the hostilities between Azerbaijan and Armenia when the Russian President was editing a ceasefire agreement with the president of Azerbaijan and the prime minister of Armenia, the matter of the affiliation of Nagorno-Karabakh was deliberately left out of the brackets—a gentleman's agreement that the status is subject to further agreement between the parties. What happened happened,” Lavrov noted.

And for a better understanding of the situation, he recalled the negotiations that lasted more than a decade, when several times it seemed that an agreement would be reached.

“They do not criticize those who do nothing. We [i.e. Russia] were just trying [to do something],” the Russian FM noted.

In turn, Armenian Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan noted that in August 2022, the Russian side submitted a mediation proposal, to which Armenia agreed, but Azerbaijan did not. In September, an attack and violation of Armenia’s territorial integrity, a violation of internationally recognized borders was carried out by Azerbaijan. Armenia’s allies, both Russia and the CSTO, were informed about the incident. According to the Armenian FM, their actions were insufficient for Armenia. In October, a quadrilateral meeting was held in Prague, where the perception was confirmed that Armenia and Azerbaijan mutually recognize territorial integrity on the basis of the Alma-Ata Declaration.

Mirzoyan added that Armenia’s position on the Nagorno-Karabakh issue has not been shared by international partners for many years, including Russia, which has emphasized at a high level that Nagorno-Karabakh belongs to Azerbaijan.