The Collective Security Treaty Organization was established in 2002, and this political-military alliance includes 6 member states, namely Russia, Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. Aggression against one of these countries is seen as aggression against all countries, and the organization is considered “a kind of Russian counterweight in the face of the alliance North Atlantic (NATO).
However, the organization is witnessing some internal criticism, the most recent of which was, on Wednesday, what the Armenian Prime Minister, Nikol Pashinyan, said in a session of parliament, where he stressed that the CSTO did not interact properly with the Azerbaijani invasion in May 2021.
A new session of the Military Committee of the Collective Security Treaty Organization was held via video conference, Thursday.
She explained that “the meetings of the CSTO Military Committee are normally held twice a year, in the first and second half of the year, face-to-face or online. The issue of sending troops from the CSTO to participate in any operation was not included on the agenda. the meeting”.
Russia’s embarrassment
Commenting on this, Mitchell Belfer, an analyst specializing in international security and political affairs, said: “Moscow has two different ways of thinking about the situation now. The first is that it wants to involve as many partners as possible in order to succeed in its mission.”
Belfer, director of the Gulf-European Information Center in Rome, added, in statements to Sky News Arabia, that “the other side of the Kremlin is afraid to request the invocation of the Collective Security Organization, for fear of the partners’ reluctance to move to support Russia’s mission, and thus cause Moscow embarrassment internationally.”
He continued, “We have already seen the active use of Belarusian territory as well as forces in support of the Moscow mission. This has not changed the course of the battle, and even Belarus is probably afraid of sending too many troops abroad, given that there are rising tensions internally, and it will need those forces to continue to maintain order. “.
He noted that “Kazakhstan also refused to send troops to support Russia despite the fact that Russia provided assistance to Kazakhstan earlier in the year to deal with an insurgency that lasted for about 10 days.”
Organization Law
In turn, the American expert on strategic affairs, Irina Zuckerman, said that the tasks of the Collective Security Treaty, the defense of a member against foreign invading forces, and recently intervened in Kazakhstan for a brief period to provide assistance to solve the internal security problem.
And Zuckerman added, in an interview with Sky News Arabia, that “the matter here is different. Russia was not exposed to an outright invasion, and it is the aggressor party, even if Ukraine violated its borders for a short period, it is not an invading power. There is nothing in this mandate that would live up to Russia’s interest.” “.
And she continued, “Russia has also tried to persuade individual countries, including Belarus and Kazakhstan, to join its forces. Kazakhstan has flatly refused in the past, and Belarus has not explicitly said yes or no, but it has not been particularly helpful.”
On February 19, five days before the war, the Secretary-General of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) Stanislav Zas said that the organization might send peacekeeping forces to areas in eastern Ukraine controlled by Moscow-backed rebels “if necessary”.
At the same time, he pointed out that the organization has “a force of 17,000 soldiers on permanent alert, and a specialized peacekeeping force of about 4,000 soldiers.”
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