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Russia not giving up on relations with Armenia amid CSTO withdrawal talk — Kremlin

Dmitry Peskov refrained from further commenting on each of Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan's statements

MOSCOW, June 13. /TASS/. Moscow hopes to keep good relations with Yerevan despite talk of Armenia leaving the CSTO, Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.

"We will continue our contacts with the Armenian side. We expect the alliance and partnership character of our relations to prevail," the Kremlin spokesman said, commenting on Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan's statements on the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) and Belarus.

Peskov refrained from further commenting on each of Pashinyan's statements.

On Thursday, the Armenian Prime Minister said that the next logical step in relations with the CSTO would be to withdraw from the organization. He also noted that neither he nor other officials of the country will visit Belarus as long as Alexander Lukashenko is president there. According to Pashinyan, the president of Belarus, as the head of a CSTO member state, "participated in the preparation of the 44-day war (the conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh in 2020 - TASS), encouraged and wished victory to Azerbaijan."

Lukashenko made a state visit to Azerbaijan on May 15-17, during which he visited Nagorno-Karabakh. In particular, he said that Minsk and Baku "equally understand the world and where it is going," and offered his Azerbaijani counterpart Ilham Aliyev assistance in Karabakh's postwar reconstruction.