Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan hosted the participants of the sitting of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Collective Security Treaty Organization, chaired by Vyacheslav Volodin, Chairman of the CSTO Parliamentary Assembly and Speaker of the State Duma of the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation. President of the National Assembly of Armenia Alen Simonyan and CSTO Secretary General Stanislav Zas also took part in the meeting.

Welcoming the participants of the meeting, the Prime Minister noted that this year marks the 30th anniversary of the establishment of the CSTO, which is a remarkable event. "We have mentioned many times that this is a good opportunity to sum up the results, analyze our achievements, shortcomings, steps, how we can make our organization more effective. In this context, of course, the role of the Council of the Parliamentary Assembly cannot be overestimated, as the CSTO is in fact the political platform where all these issues should be discussed.

I think the parliamentary format creates wider opportunities for that. The last time we met in this format was in 2019, since then there have been many big changes in the world related to coronavirus, besides the situation in our region, in general in the world is quite tense. I think this is a very powerful platform to share our vision for the future, to try to make the CSTO mechanisms more effective in responding to crisis situations.

This is one of the topics that is very important both for our country and the organization in general. As the presiding country, we consider this issue one of the priorities of our presidency and I hope we will be able to come to concrete decisions on this issue," Nikol Pashinyan said.

Vyacheslav Volodin thanked the Prime Minister for the warm reception, noting that the meeting of the Council provides an opportunity to work out decisions and develop relations between countries. "The Assembly allows to harmonize the legislations, to develop model laws. When we talk about the harmonization of legislation, first of all it refers to terrorism, the fight against extremism, military-political cooperation, the activities of peacekeeping forces and other issues," Volodin said, adding that the works of the Council session usually start from the discussion of the priorities of the CSTO presiding country.

Afterwards, the participants of the sitting exchanged views on the development of CSTO mechanisms, the situation in the South Caucasus and the settlement of the Nagorno Karabakh conflict within the framework of the OSCE Minsk Group.

Nikol Pashinyan referred to the activities of the Delimitation and Border Security Commission between Armenia and Azerbaijan, the unblocking of regional infrastructure, and the steps taken to return Armenian prisoners of war, hostages and other civilians still held in Azerbaijan. In connection with the latter, the Prime Minister attached importance to the support of the international community.