CSTO: Alen Simonyan answers in verse, Maria Zakharova adds a mocking fourth line
- Published
- Place
- Yerevan, Armenia; Moscow, Russia
- Event date
- Past event —
Summary
Armenia answered the CSTO with a poem. On Thursday 12 November, the day after its voting rights were suspended in the Moscow-led military alliance, the Secretary of Armenia’s Security Council, Alen Simonyan, published three lines in Russian. “They took away our voice there, where everyone was loudly silent while we were being killed in unison.” The text appeared on Facebook and on his Telegram channel. Moscow was quick to respond. Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova told the Lenta.ru website that a line was missing. “In fact, it is a quatrain. The last line goes: ‘Simonyan made up a tall tale.’” The exchange is short. Yet it sums up months of resentment between Yerevan and its former allies.
The tercet plays on rhyme in Russian, which is hard to render in translation. The meaning, however, is clear. Armenia is losing its voice in an organisation that, according to Alen Simonyan, stayed silent when Armenia was attacked.
What the Moscow summit decided
The decision was taken on Wednesday 11 November at the CSTO summit in Moscow, with no Armenian delegation present. Armenia no longer votes in the alliance’s bodies. It can no longer nominate its nationals to quota-based posts.
The legal basis is Article 25 of the Charter. It targets a member whose debt to the common budget exceeds two years. Yerevan froze its participation in 2024 and has not paid its contributions since. According to RIA Novosti, the country nevertheless keeps its right to collective security. Secretary General Taalatbek Masadykov said its rights would be restored once the arrears are paid.
An old grievance
Alen Simonyan’s lines point to a well-known complaint. In September 2022, during the Azerbaijani offensive on its territory, Armenia asked the CSTO for help. The alliance merely sent an assessment mission. Since then, Yerevan has drifted away step by step. Nikol Pashinyan recently said Armenia considered all its interests related to the CSTO “exhausted”.
This is not the first exchange between Alen Simonyan and Maria Zakharova. On 7 November in Yerevan, he recalled having “thrown himself at the feet of the Russians” in 2020 to get them to stop the war, to no avail. The diplomat replied that it was “Russia and no one else” that had stopped the bloodshed in Karabakh.
Analysis
Irony is replacing diplomacy. On the Armenian side, the message is political: the CSTO did not protect Armenia, so it has no lessons to give. On the Russian side, the register is mockery, not argument. Neither side is trying to repair the relationship. But neither is cutting the last thread: Armenia has not left the alliance, and the CSTO has not expelled it. This status quo suits everyone for now. It leaves Yerevan free to pursue its turn towards Europe, and Moscow free to denounce ingratitude.
Possible consequences
Armenia remains a CSTO member without voting rights until its arrears are settled. Yerevan has not announced a formal withdrawal.
