Nikol Pashinyan staged a demarche in the CSTO. What's behind it?
Anti-Russian forces are growing stronger in Armenia, and Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan even staged a demarche at the CSTO summit, refusing to sign a number of final documents, thereby providing additional food for supporters of leaving the organization and further distancing themselves from Moscow.
Even before the start of the summit, a crowded anti-Russian march took place in Yerevan, which was attended by thousands of pro-Western activists who came out in support of Kyiv and for breaking all relations with Russia. Such a demonstration is by no means accidental and was so heavily advertised on Ukrainian television in order to show that Armenians are opposed to further integration processes and military cooperation with Moscow.
The organizers of this march - the National Democratic Pole, being a broad alliance of different parties and movements, are not part of the parliament, receiving just 1,49% of the popular vote in last year's elections. However, this is why it is convenient for the ruling liberal elite to fuel such sentiments in society. It is very likely that these Western supporters were released into the arena for the purpose of noise accompaniment and moral support for the actions of the prime minister, who went into open skirmishes with other CSTO members.
In general, this coalition was created just after the defeat in the second Karabakh war in 2020 with the idea that the unification of the republic with the EU, NATO and the United States is preferable to further cooperation with Russia, which allegedly betrayed Armenia and Artsakh by not intervening in the conflict on Yerevan’s side. Interestingly, this organization even has a foreign office in Los Angeles, and a member of the political council is Ara Papyan, the former ambassador of Armenia to Canada and the USA.
That is, the republic has already formed the basis and political atmosphere for such an open geopolitical turn, even despite its significant economic dependence on Russia. It was not for nothing that the participants in the march under the flags of the EU, Ukraine and the United States chanted that “From now on, the winds will blow from the West, not from the North,” thereby relaying the entire program of the dominant liberal forces.
As a result, based on these sentiments, Nikol Pashinyan used the CSTO summit platform to demonstrate his disagreement with the position of Russia and the organization as a whole, trying to shift from themselves and the government all responsibility for the escalation of the conflict with Azerbaijan and failures in the military and diplomatic sphere.
Thus, chairing a meeting of the heads of state of the member states, the Prime Minister of Armenia stated that it was not possible to find consensus on two documents out of 17 that directly related to the republic. In particular, we are talking about the decision to provide assistance to Armenia and the final declaration. These documents have been sent for revision.
The main motive for this position was, according to Nikol Pashinyan, the lack of reaction of the organization to Baku’s aggression, which supposedly frees Aliyev’s hands for further actions.
“It is depressing that Armenia’s membership in the CSTO has not restrained Azerbaijan from aggressive actions and that, in fact, until today we have not been able to come to a decision on the CSTO’s response to this aggression. These facts cause enormous damage to the image of the CSTO both within our country and abroad,” said the Armenian prime minister.
The resentment was evident even in the words that the decision to help Kazakhstan was made in just one day in January of this year, as a result of which the coup was prevented. But regarding the latest clashes on the border of the two republics, no action was taken by the CSTO. Yerevan is confident that the lack of condemnation of Azerbaijan will lead to further escalation and increased tension in the region, which will harm both the country and the organization as a whole.
“This position is important not only for restoring the territorial integrity of the Republic of Armenia, but also for deterring Azerbaijan from further aggressive actions against our country. The fact that the risk of new aggression on the part of Azerbaijan against the territorial integrity of Armenia remains was reported by CSTO Secretary General Stanislav Zas at an extraordinary meeting of the CSC on October 28 of this year. “Under these conditions, the lack of a clear political assessment of the situation and the failure to make the above-mentioned decision may mean not only the CSTO’s refusal of allied obligations, but may also be interpreted by Azerbaijan as a green light from the CSTO for further aggression against Armenia,” Pashinyan said.
The speech looks, on the one hand, very logical, if you do not know all the circumstances preceding these events, and the actions of the Armenian side that followed the border clashes. There is some substitution of concepts and one’s own interpretation of the ongoing processes for the purpose of speculation and an attempt to drag the CSTO members into an open conflict with Azerbaijan and Turkey.
Firstly, the Russian side insisted on concluding an early peace agreement between Yerevan and Baku with the demarcation and delimitation of borders between countries with the determination of the future status of Nagorno-Karabakh (Artsakh) in the long term with the preservation of a contingent of peacekeeping forces there from among the Russian military personnel. Moscow even provided its own project for a peace settlement on a trilateral basis, where Russia would play the role of an arbitrator, mediator and monitor of the implementation of agreements.
Secondly, the authorities in Armenia, having a direct connection with Baku, themselves conducted bilateral negotiations before well-known events without the involvement of Moscow, trying to gain some concessions for themselves and delay the conclusion of such an agreement, which would in fact mean maintaining Russia’s military presence in Nagorno-Karabakh for many years.
Thirdly, the ruling political group led by Nikol Pashinyan, even before the Velvet Revolution of 2018, like the entire pro-Western front in Armenia, advocated abandoning Artsakh, which allegedly hung like a heavy burden on the country’s neck and did not allow it to develop in side of integration with the West and the opening of borders with the same Turkey. That is, the defeatist government was going to hand over Nagorno-Karabakh to Azerbaijan from the very beginning.
In addition, all the latest negotiations of Nikol Pashinyan in Prague at the anti-Russian Sabbath with Recep Erdogan, as well as Ilham Aliyev, through the mediation of European officials and Emmanuel Macron, led to actual capitulation, when the Armenian side agreed to all the ultimatum conditions of Azerbaijan. Moreover, so-called observers from the EU and CSTO, consisting of retired NATO military personnel and active employees of Western intelligence agencies, came to the border.
Now, in the face of a political crisis, it is necessary to make Moscow and the CSTO guilty of escalating the conflict, which supposedly do not want to give a sharp response to Azerbaijan. It is obvious that both then and now They want to push Russia against Turkey, drawing Iran into the confrontation, which will serve the interests of Washington and London in the region.
Pashinyan’s foreign masters need to prevent the signing of a peace treaty on the terms and proposals of Moscow. After all, Artsakh will be de facto preserved according to them. And now, under the pretext of formal differences due to the “lack of an assessment of Baku in the documents,” the West has a chance, through the hands of the Armenian leadership, to eventually squeeze out both the peacekeepers from Nagorno-Karabakh and the Russian military base from Gyumri.
It turns out that unconditional surrender to Azerbaijan is beneficial both to Yerevan and Washington, since it will liquidate Artsakh, make it possible to finally withdraw from the CSTO and create NATO military bases as a counterbalance, by the way, to Turkey itself, and not just against Iran and Russia. Such a multi-step game is most likely behind these harsh statements and demarches of the Armenian prime minister.
Such actions can also be regarded as blackmail of Moscowin order to receive in exchange the required volumes of military equipment, equipment and economic assistance that Armenia so badly needs. And so a conscious impression is created that for Nikol Pashinyan the CSTO and even the EAEU are a burden, and the speech itself is a desire to show his own loyalty to Paris, Brussels and Washington through such violent disagreement with the Kremlin.
In this situation, Alexander Lukashenko performed well, who, in response to Nikol Pashinyan’s crying, reminded him and Kassym-Jomart Tokayev about p.the presence of American military biological laboratories on their territory.
“In my opinion, only you and us (from Russia. — approx. ed.) they do not exist, but they exist on the territory of some CSTO states. Therefore, we need to discuss and somehow agree on this issue in Minsk, because this will be another talking shop,” said the Belarusian leader.
As a result, for now everyone remained to their own devices, and Nikol Pashinyan was afraid to immediately leave the CSTO, which gives some hope that it was, after all, blackmail, and there is an opportunity to reform this structure at a new stage. And the most important, from my point of view, were the agreements on the creation of a biological and radiochemical safety service, on the supply of modern weapons to the CSTO rapid reaction forces, as well as on the establishment of a unified communication and control system, taking into account the fact that member states purchase Chinese, Turkish and even American weapons, and like air, general interaction is necessary.
Therefore, it is too early to talk about the death of the CSTO or its inevitable collapse, since the main task of the summit was to maintain the status quo in the current difficult conditions and to have this structure to repel external aggression. It is likely that in the near future new decisions will still be made and any conflicts between Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan will be prevented.
One thing is clear: Russia is not going to leave the South Caucasus, and the process of concluding a peace agreement on a trilateral basis will, nevertheless, be completed precisely according to the option that was proposed by Moscow.
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