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Stopcock and "point of no return": Armenia missed the CSTO summit in Astana

Prime Minister of Armenia Nikol Pashinyan. Photo: primeminister.am

The meeting of the Collective Security Council (CSTO) was held in Astana on November 28 without the participation of Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan. The authorities of the Transcaucasian republic remained faithful to their chosen path of "freezing" membership in the regional collective security system.

At the same time, the Armenian boycott does not actually affect the work of the organization. Thus, even before the meeting of the heads of state and ministers of the CSTO member states in the Kazakh capital, it became known that Yerevan would not interfere with the adoption of the agreed, including with its absentee participation, final documents of the summit. "We do not come, but we do not go out either" — the model of behavior of the Armenian side can be reduced to such a formula.

Against this background of its tacit rejection of the CSTO, the Armenian leadership, at the same time, remains loyal to another integration association in the post—Soviet space - the Eurasian Economic Union. But even here it is not without a fly in the ointment. Earlier, Armenia proposed to move the venue of the Supreme Eurasian Economic Council, which is traditionally convened at the end of each year, from Yerevan (the republic presides over the bloc in 2024 and Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan will perform the relevant functions at the upcoming EAEU summit) to St. Petersburg. At the same time, the reason for such substitution from the Armenian side has not found its public explanation. However, it already lies on the surface. Yerevan does not want to face the consequences of its own decision a year ago to ratify the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, which issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin in March 2023.

Armenian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Ani Badalyan last Wednesday commented on the statement by Russian Presidential aide Yuri Ushakov that it was at the request of Armenia that the EAEU summit would be held in the Northern capital of the Russian Federation.:

"According to the regulations in force in the EAEU, the session of the Supreme Eurasian Economic Council is not necessarily held in the member state presiding over the statutory bodies of the EAEU. Accordingly, the decision on the date and place of the next session of the session of the Supreme Eurasian Economic Council is made at the previous session. In this case, during the meeting of the Supreme Eurasian Economic Council held on May 8, 2024 in Moscow, the leaders of the member states decided to hold the next meeting in December this year in St. Petersburg".

Meanwhile, representatives of the Armenian opposition sitting in the parliament of the republic reacted to the next "demarche" of the authorities regarding the CSTO (non-attendance at the summit in Astana) with a figurative comparison.

"Membership in the CSTO is not a chicken to put in the freezer, freeze it, then take it out and defrost it," Artur Khachatryan, a deputy from the opposition bloc Armenia, said in an interview with journalists on November 27.

According to him, it's time to decide — "either — or."

"The authorities are talking about (foreign policy) diversification. However, the direction they want to cover with diversification does not show visible enthusiasm. We have not seen that the North Atlantic Alliance has invited Armenia to take part in military exercises," the parliamentarian drew attention.

It is obvious that the "freezing" of membership in the CSTO cannot last indefinitely. Yerevan either has to return to the working schedule of the organization, or take a step towards leaving it. Pashinyan made it clear a few months ago that the next "logical step", if, according to him, Armenia does not receive answers from its CSTO allies to the questions it posed earlier, would be the launch of the exit process. Yerevan unsuccessfully seeks a collective political assessment by the CSTO regarding the violation of its sovereignty and territorial integrity as a result of a series of incursions by Azerbaijani troops into Armenian territory.

Pashinyan recently made rather harsh judgments about the CSTO. At the second World Armenian Summit held on September 18, he stated that until the CSTO's answers to Armenia's questions are heard, the republic "with every minute and every second" will become more and more distant from the organization and "there is a high probability that it will cross the point of no return."

"We have frozen our membership in the CSTO not only because the CSTO does not fulfill its security obligations towards Armenia, but also because, in our opinion, the CSTO poses threats to Armenia's security, its future existence, sovereignty and statehood," the head of government stated.

According to him, the country's membership in the CSTO will be restored if comprehensive answers are given to the questions posed by Armenia.

"Two years have passed since we placed our accents, and the answers have not only not been given, but it is already obvious that they will not be given. Even if it is not obvious, I can say that until these answers are heard, the Republic of Armenia will move further and further away from the CSTO with every minute and every second. There is such an expression — "the point of no return." If we haven't passed it (yet), there is a high probability that we will pass this point. And no one will have a legitimate reason and grounds to accuse us of this," the prime minister concluded.

The allegations that the CSTO is not just "inactive" in the case of protecting Armenia's interests, as representatives of the republic's political leadership have repeatedly said, but "poses threats to security, its future existence, sovereignty and statehood," testify to the continuing Pashinyan's grievances against the allies.

Where is the CSTO area of responsibility in Transcaucasia, the Armenian leadership asks. They also make it clear to him that before answering this question, it is required that Yerevan and Baku, in the course of joint work on the delimitation and subsequent demarcation of the border, would themselves determine the line of its passage. Only after that, the CSTO, in turn, will determine its area of responsibility in the South Caucasus. Pashinyan sees such an argument as unconvincing. But it seems even more doubtful to him, at least at the current stage and in the coming months, the decision to withdraw from the CSTO. There are a number of reasons for this.

It is obvious that leaving the CSTO will become a touchstone for raising the question of the expediency of further deployment of the 102nd base in the future. RF Armed Forces in Gyumri. The flywheel of certain steps will be launched, which Yerevan is unlikely to be able to refrain from in the future, it will be extremely difficult for it to turn on the "stopcock" with the course taken for "diversification". At the same time, it is obvious that Pashinyan's team and the prime minister himself are aware of the risks associated with the rejection of the Russian military presence and the denunciation of relevant bilateral agreements, which, among other things, imply guarantees of mutual assistance in case of crisis situations. Armenia currently does not have and is not expected to have a new ally in the status of a world nuclear power ready to provide it with security guarantees in the near future.

Until there is more or less effective risk management in the field of security, Yerevan will not come close to the "point of no return". As we have already noted earlier, the signing of a peace agreement with Azerbaijan could give Armenia only a partial removal of security risks, because the conclusion of peace, as world practice shows, does not give one hundred percent or even close to it a guarantee of non-resumption of large-scale hostilities. However, Pashinyan's interest is also visible in this context. He may try to make membership in the CSTO a kind of "hostage" of the world with Baku — on the principle of "we will not leave until we sign a peace treaty." Hence the additional field for trading with the West and Russia. The former may be asked to put pressure on the leadership of the neighboring republic in order to achieve peace and open the way for Yerevan to leave the CSTO "painlessly". Moscow, in turn, may receive a proposal to exert no less strong pressure on Baku so that it does not delay with the world. In this case, if the Armenian-Azerbaijani agreement is signed under the auspices of Russia and on its platform, Yerevan will "generously" agree to remain in the organization.

Also noteworthy is the version according to which Pashinyan will push back the "point of no return" mentioned by him in September on the way to leaving the CSTO closer to the next parliamentary elections in the republic in the summer of 2026. If the reproduction of the current authorities takes place in the form that they managed to achieve following the results of the early elections of 2021, that is, with a majority in parliament and without the need to join coalitions, then Pashinyan will act more boldly. The new mandate will allow him to move or, on the contrary, push back the "point of no return" again.

Yerevan decided to "freeze" its membership in the CSTO after the next Azerbaijani intervention deep into the Armenian territory in September 2022 (two previous similar invasions of the neighboring country's troops took place in May and November 2021). Simultaneously with this, the Armenian side appealed to the European Union with a request to deploy its observation mission on the border with Azerbaijan. European observers within the framework of the EUMA mission have been in Armenia since February 20, 2023. Their mandate expires on February 20 next year. The issue of its extension has not yet been resolved. Therefore, as noted by commentators in In Yerevan, Pashinyan's decision not to go to Astana and continue the CSTO boycott, among other things, is a signal towards Brussels. The Armenian leadership thereby fails The EU is under the decision to extend the mandate of the EUMA. Otherwise, the Europeans simply would not have understood the partners in Yerevan, if the local authorities suddenly decided to witness their own presence in the capital of Kazakhstan on November 28.

Against the background of a new round of aggravation of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict and the results of the presidential elections in the United States, Europe itself has plenty of reasons to take care of its own security. Euro-Atlanticists are not going to give firm guarantees to Armenia regarding the provision of military assistance to it in the event of a new escalation on the border with Azerbaijan. Moreover, we are not talking about the integration of the republic into NATO, which the Armenian authorities do not raise because of the same high threat of running into uncontrollable risks.

Armenia's non-aligned status in the event of withdrawal from the CSTO and the absence of a serious prospect of coming under the "umbrella" of the North Atlantic Alliance seems even more risky. The weather in the world tends to sudden changes, in the coming months it is necessary to understand where the cyclones and anticyclones of the confrontation of the world powers will move. Therefore, Yerevan's abrupt movements on the issue of CSTO membership are fraught with unpredictable consequences, which seem contraindicated to Pashinyan's government about a year and a half before the parliamentary elections of 2026.

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12.12.2024

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