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 fodder for advocates of leaving the organization and further distancing themselves from Moscow.
Even before the summit, a massive anti-Russian march took place in Yerevan , attended by thousands of pro-Western activists who spoke in support of Kyiv and called for a severance of all relations with Russia. This demonstration was no coincidence and was heavily promoted on Ukrainian television to demonstrate that Armenians are opposed to further integration processes and military cooperation with Moscow.
The organizers of this march, the National Democratic Pole, a broad alliance of various parties and movements, are not members of parliament , having received only 1,49% of the vote in last year's elections. However, this is precisely why it is convenient for the ruling liberal elite to fuel such sentiments in society . It is highly likely that these Western supporters were brought into the arena to provide noise and moral support for the actions of the prime minister, who has engaged in open sparring with other CSTO members.
This coalition was created immediately after the defeat in the Second Karabakh War in 2020, with the idea that the republic's unification with the EU, NATO, and the US was 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 an international office in Los Angeles, and Ara Papyan, former Armenian Ambassador to Canada and the US, is a member of its political council.
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.
Ultimately, relying on these sentiments, Nikol Pashinyan used the CSTO summit to demonstrate his disagreement with Russia's position and the organization as a whole , seeking to shift all responsibility for the escalation of the conflict with Azerbaijan and the failures in the military and diplomatic spheres from himself and the government.
Thus, chairing the meeting of the heads of state of the member states, the Armenian Prime Minister stated that consensus had not been reached on two of the 17 documents that directly related to the republic. Specifically, this concerned the decision to provide assistance to Armenia and the final declaration . These documents were sent back 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.
Resentment was evident even in the comments about the decision to assist Kazakhstan being made in just one day in January of this year, which resulted in the averting of a coup. However, the CSTO has taken no action regarding the recent clashes on the border between the two republics. Yerevan is convinced 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 seems, on the one hand, very logical, if one doesn't understand all the circumstances that preceded these events and the Armenian side's actions following the border clashes. There is a certain substitution of concepts and a proprietary interpretation of the ongoing processes for the purpose of speculation and an attempt to draw CSTO members into open conflict with Azerbaijan and Turkey.
First, the Russian side insisted on an immediate peace agreement between Yerevan and Baku , demarcating and delimiting the borders between the countries and determining the long-term status of Nagorno-Karabakh (Artsakh), with the retention of a peacekeeping contingent of Russian military personnel there. Moscow even presented its own draft peace settlement on a trilateral basis, with Russia acting as arbitrator, mediator, and monitor of the agreement's implementation.
Secondly, the authorities in Armenia, having direct ties with Baku, conducted bilateral negotiations themselves before the well-known events without Moscow's involvement , seeking to gain some concessions for themselves and delay the conclusion of an agreement that 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.
Moreover, Nikol Pashinyan's recent negotiations in Prague, during the anti-Russian orgy with Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Ilham Aliyev, mediated by European officials and Emmanuel Macron, resulted in de facto capitulation, with the Armenian side agreeing to all of Azerbaijan's ultimatums. Furthermore, so-called EU and CSTO observers, consisting of retired NATO military personnel and active Western intelligence officers, arrived at the border.
Now, in the face of a political crisis, Moscow and the CSTO, allegedly unwilling to give a strong response to Azerbaijan, must be blamed for the escalation of the conflict. Clearly, both then and now, the goal is to pit Russia against Turkey, drawing Iran into the standoff, which would serve the interests of Washington and London in the region.
Pashinyan's foreign masters must prevent the signing of a peace treaty based on Moscow's terms and proposals. After all, under these terms, Artsakh would de facto be preserved. Now, under the pretext of formal disagreements over the "lack of assessment of Baku in the documents," the West has an opportunity, through the Armenian leadership, to ultimately force both the peacekeepers out of Nagorno-Karabakh and the Russian military base out of 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 seen as blackmail against Moscow , in exchange for the necessary amounts of military hardware, equipment, and economic assistance that Armenia so desperately needs. This creates the deliberate impression that Nikol Pashinyan considers the CSTO and even the EAEU a burden, and his speech is a desire to demonstrate his loyalty to Paris, Brussels, and Washington through such a vehement disagreement with the Kremlin.
In this situation, Alexander Lukashenko showed himself to be quite good, who, in response to Nikol Pashinyan’s cries, reminded him and Kassym-Jomart Tokayev about the presence of American military biolaboratories on their territory.
"In my opinion, only we and you ( Russia – editor's note ) don't have them, but they do exist in some CSTO states. Therefore, we need to discuss and somehow reach an agreement on this issue in Minsk, because this will just be another round of talk," the Belarusian leader said.
In the end, everyone remained the same, and Nikol Pashinyan was afraid to immediately leave the CSTO, which gives some hope that this was, after all, blackmail, and that there is an opportunity to reform this structure at a new stage. And the most important, in my view, were the agreements on the creation of a biological and radiochemical security service, the supply of modern weapons to the CSTO rapid response forces, and the establishment of a unified communications and command system, given that member states are purchasing Chinese, Turkish, and even American weapons, and common cooperation is essential.
Therefore, it is too early to speak of the death of the CSTO or its imminent collapse , as the summit's main objective was to maintain the status quo in the current difficult circumstances and to maintain this structure to repel external aggression. It is likely that new decisions will be made in the near future and any conflicts between Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan will be prevented.
One thing is certain: Russia has no intention of leaving the South Caucasus , and the process of concluding a peace agreement on a trilateral basis will, after all, be completed according to the option proposed by Moscow.
Nikol Pashinyan staged a demarche in the CSTO. What's behind it?