A regular meeting of the Council of the CSTO (Collective Security Treaty Organization) member countries’ Defense Ministers took place on Friday in Almaty. Armenia did not participate in the event. This is no surprise – although Armenia has not withdrawn from the CSTO, it does not participate in the organization’s activities, including joint military exercises. Earlier Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said in parliament that he knows “at least two CSTO countries that participated in the preparation of war” against Armenia, and Yerevan announced about stopping partaking in funding the Collective Security Treaty Organization, which also includes Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan. Armenia, as the Russian media put it, “continued its boycott of the CSTO, having evaded participation in the CSTO event in Almaty”.

Thus, the Collective Security Treaty Organization in its present state is just Russia and Belarus which are formally part of a union state and currently under Western sanctions, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, now and then coming into armed conflict with each other, and Kazakhstan whose stay in the CSTO seems to be getting weirder lately. This is what this post-Soviet military-political alliance looks like today.

Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan explained the suspension of its country’s participation in the CSTO activities as follows: Armenia can no longer rely on Russia as its main defense and military partner because Moscow has repeatedly let it down so Yerevan must think about forging closer ties with the United States and France. He questioned whether Armenia should remain a member of the Russian-led Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), and said Armenia needed a new national security strategy and would strengthen its army. Armenia’s PM said that the CSTO couldn’t be relied upon and he did not have an answer to the question of the Armenian society, why in such a situation, the........

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