Pashinyan falls ill with COVID-19 and will miss the CIS leaders' summit because of it

Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan has contracted the CORONAVIRUS and worked from home on December 23-24, according to a message on his TELEGRAM channel.

“After consulting with my colleagues, I will not participate in the informal summit of CIS leaders that will take place today in St. Petersburg,” he said.

The Prime Minister also said that by the end of the day he will decide whether to participate in the meeting of the Supreme Economic Council of the EAEU on December 26 .

The meeting of CIS leaders in St. Petersburg is traditional. Pashinyan attended it in 2023.

Pashinyan has recently repeatedly criticized the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), of which Armenia is a member. The prime minister linked his dissatisfaction with the fact that the organization did not provide assistance to Yerevan during the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan in Nagorno-Karabakh.

In early December, the politician said that returning to the CSTO was impossible for Yerevan, "the point of no return has been passed." Following the CSTO summit in Kazakhstan in late November, President Vladimir Putin said that Armenia had not officially announced its withdrawal from the organization. He allowed that the country "will return to full-scale work within the CSTO."

Read RBC on Telegram .