Konstantin Zatulin, First Deputy Chairman of the State Duma Committee on CIS Affairs, Eurasian Integration and Relations with Compatriots, the results of the CSTO summit in Yerevan. And the refusal of Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan to sign a draft declaration on CSTO assistance.
Pashinyan explained this by the incompleteness of the declaration, the absence of a “clear political assessment of the situation” in it. But at the same time he called the negotiations within the Council of the Collective Security Treaty Organization “honest, positive and open.”
“The results of the summit, in my opinion, are contradictory. Of the 17 documents prepared for signing, 15 were signed. But just those that created intrigue (namely, the declaration and the document related to Armenia’s request regarding the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict) were not signed , and at the initiative of the Armenian side.
The task of the summit in Yerevan, it seems to me, was to reverse the actively developing moods and prove the necessity and usefulness of the CSTO for Armenia. And I do not rule out that this is the task facing Russian President Vladimir Putin. In this case, the categorical position of the Armenian side, on the contrary, created the preconditions for the Armenian society to develop requests and criticism of the CSTO, as an organization that formally takes, but in fact does not fulfill its obligations to Armenia.
The document, which was to be signed, assumed the dispatch of a CSTO monitoring group to the conflict zone between Armenia and Azerbaijan. And thus it was beneficial for the Armenian side, which was attacked in September – Azerbaijani troops advanced 8 km deep into Armenian territory and, according to Armenia, captured 140 square kilometers of Armenian territory.
Then the CSTO to some extent fell into a trap, preferring to act behind the scenes, behind the scenes – not to inflate this conflict, but to try to calm it down without making public statements. But just tuned in to the Western mood in the government of Armenia, this allowed them to encourage the campaign against the CSTO inside the republic and declare the union worthless and its failure to fulfill its obligations. The refusal to sign documents related to the conflict issue by the chairman of the summit, Pashinyan, is a continuation of the same line.
There are sympathizers of Azerbaijan inside the CSTO, and this was demonstrated in the most vivid form during the last meeting by the President of the Republic of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko. I do not rule out that other members of the CSTO (for example, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan) also do not want any aggravation with Azerbaijan and consistently oppose such an “Azerbaijani declaration”.
One can imagine that someone would like the CSTO document to be abusive, but when it comes to the CSTO, this is hardly possible. And a politician with experience, with experience in international activities, probably would have found a way out of this situation. At one time, Mr. Pashinyan scattered statements that Nagorno-Karabakh is Armenia and that’s it, and provoked a response from Azerbaijan – everything ended, as you know, with the 2020 war. Therefore, by his character and experience, he is clearly not at the height of diplomacy.
And what happened on Wednesday can be interpreted, on the one hand, as his inability, and on the other, as encouragement of the same negative sentiments against the CSTO. I think that Pashinyan is applauded in Washington and Brussels. And, of course, there are positive results following the summit. But, it seems to me, the CSTO as a whole should be much more active. Because even if Armenia did not withdraw from the CSTO, it gave rise to doubt that it intends to continue to belong to the CSTO.”
