The war cracks the bloc of Russia’s satellite countries

Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and Russian President Vladimir Putin during the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) summit in Yerevan, Armenia. / REUTERS

Putin throws his pen on the table at the group’s latest summit as Armenia refuses to sign the final declaration

The formal reason for the disagreement staged on Wednesday in Yerevan (Armenia) by the Russian President, Vladimir Putin, and the Armenian Prime Minister, Nikol Pashinián, has once again been the situation in the Nagorno-Karabakh enclave and the persistent armed clashes with security forces. Azerbaijan. For Pashinián it is the straw that broke the camel’s back. But in the background there is also the war in Ukraine, which is breaking the cohesion between the members of the so-called Organization of the Collective Security Treaty (ODKB in its acronym in Russian), a kind of NATO headed by Russia, created in 1992 and to the which also belong to Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan.

After the bloc’s summit held on Wednesday in the Armenian capital, Pashinián refused to sign the final declaration in front of Putin, who at that moment threw his pen on the table in disgust and neither signed the document nor the project to help Armenia to overcome the Nagorno Karabagh conflict. Both texts must now be redrafted. The Armenian leader stated that “at this moment I believe that the draft declaration (…) presented for his signature has not been sufficiently worked out, and thus, with all due respect, I am not ready to sign.” He thanked those present and got up from the table before the astonished look of the first Russian president.

The head of the Armenian Government motivated his rejection in the “lack of political evaluation” by the ODKB regarding the “aggression” of Azerbaijan, which is not part of the group although it has the full support of Turkey, against territorial integrity from Armenia. According to him, “during the last two years, Armenia, a member country of the ODKB, has been the target of aggression by Azerbaijan on at least three occasions.”

“It is depressing that Armenia’s membership of the ODKB does not deter Azerbaijan from aggressive actions,” added Pashinyan, who also complained that his allies, led by Russia, have not yet been able to issue a statement. evaluative after the general attacks of the Azerbaijani troops. “These events cause great damage to the image of the ODKB, both within our country and abroad,” stressed the Armenian prime minister, who has had to contemplate protest demonstrations in Yerevan in recent days asking to leave the country. of the bloc for its inability to avoid conflicts and stop the attacks by the troops from Baku.

Armenia and Azerbaijan waged a war in the fall of 2020 for control of Nagorno Karabagh, territory under Azerbaijani sovereignty, but always inhabited by Armenians. The contest was won by Azerbaijan and Moscow intervened so that the parties signed a peace agreement, which was not liked in Yerevan. Many unresolved issues remained in the air, such as the release of all the prisoners and the new border route, an issue that has been causing sporadic armed confrontations; the last, on September 13, the most violent aggression after the end of the war in 2020, with the death of more than 200 soldiers on both sides. The hostilities were then ended with a new mediation by Russia, which continues to have a contingent of “peacekeeping” troops of almost 2,000 troops deployed in a sector of Nagorno Karabakh, the only one that Azerbaijan does not control.

battered reputation

The incident in Yerevan with the rejection of Pashinyan’s signature is not the only one that afflicts the organization. Kyrgyzstan canceled without explanation the ODKB ‘Indestructible Brotherhood’ military exercises that should have been held on its territory last October. Kyrgyz President Sadir Zhaparov also did not attend the meeting organized by Putin in Saint Petersburg on October 7, his birthday. According to analysts, the reason for such behavior was due to Moscow’s inaction in the face of armed clashes on the border between forces from Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, a country that in turn does not hide its displeasure at Russia’s rapprochement with the Afghan Taliban regime. . The only country in the area that did receive assistance from the Russian Army and quite quickly was Kazakhstan during the revolt that broke out there at the beginning of January.

Speaking to the BBC, the political scientist Anatoli Nesmiyan believes that Russia is no longer in a position to maintain its influence in Transcaucasia and Central Asia. In his opinion, “all this is very reminiscent of the situation before the disintegration of the USSR”, when Moscow was losing control over the republics that would later become independent, thus burying the Soviet Union. Nesmiyan estimates that Russia’s current collapse from invading Ukraine “is causing it to lose opportunities to participate in decisions in its former areas of interest.”

And it is that the international reputation of Russia after attacking Ukraine is such that many members of the ODKB begin to distance themselves from Moscow. Except for the Belarusian dictator, Alexander Lukashenko, none of the leaders of the bloc’s member countries support the invasion of Ukraine. In Yerevan, the newly re-elected Kazakh president, Kasim-Zhomart Tokayev, said during the summit that “as for Ukraine, I believe that the time has come for the collective search for a formula for peace. Any war ends with negotiations. Every opportunity should be taken to achieve at least a truce.” “We must not allow the brotherly peoples of Russia and Ukraine to be separated for tens or hundreds of years with unresolved mutual grievances,” he stressed.