“Sharing the founding principles of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, namely territorial integrity, non-use of force and inviolability of borders, the Republic of Armenia has expressed a desire to become a member of the SCO,” the Armenian Foreign Ministry said in a one-sentence social media post.
The move was announced one week after Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan’s visit to China. Mirzoyan and his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi reportedly agreed to strive to upgrade Chinese-Armenian relations to “strategic partnership.”
“We noted the strategic nature of our relations, and we see the mutual interest in levelling up these relations officially as well,” Mirzoyan told the South China Morning Post newspaper in an interview published on Thursday.
Armenia currently has the status of a “dialogue partner” in the SCO granted to it in 2016. Among the full members of the organization set up in 2001 are Russia and four other ex-Soviet states making up the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), a Russian-led military alliance.
Yerevan suspended its membership in the CSTO in early 2024, accusing its ex-Soviet allies of failing to honor their security commitments to Armenia. Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian went as far as to declare in September 2024 that the CSTO poses an existential threat to his country.
Further underscoring its heightened tensions with Moscow, Pashinian’s government enacted in April this year a law that declares the “start of a process of Armenia's accession to the European Union.” The EU foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas, welcomed the move when she visited Yerevan earlier this week. Mirzoyan said he discussed with Kallas “possible realistic further steps in the implementation of this law.”
The EU as well as the United States have imposed economic sanctions on three of the 10 SCO member states: Russia, Belarus and Iran.