On June 20, a meeting of the CSTO Security Council Committee of Secretaries was held, before which there was a consistent information campaign of the aggressor to involve this international structure, consisting of different countries that depend differently on Russia, in the Russian aggression againstUkraine.
As our Association wrote in April 2022, the main driver of Russian aggression was the dictatorial regime of Belarus, which provided its territory, military and civilian infrastructure to attack Ukraine, but large-scale involvement of Lukashenko’s troops in hostilities did not take place.
Other CSTO member states, Armenia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan, have taken a de facto wait-and-see attitude and the mass involvement of their servicemen in hostilities, in particular, hasnot been recorded, including so-called “volunteers”.
Therefore, according to our Association, these Russian occupiers may be preparing to “legally stay” in Ukraine as an alleged “peacekeeping contingent” by abusing the rules of the CSTO agreement of 2007 and the protocol to it, which was hastily ratified by the organization member states. Such a “status”, as the aggressor can model the situation, will “provide” the alleged “buffer zone” that Russia criminally plans to create after the loss of its offensive.
Interestingly, in 2021, Russia actively lobbied for the inclusion of the regime of Syrian dictator Assadin the CSTO, which apparently wanted to strengthen the “hawk wing” in the organization. Syrian mercenaries are now being verified in the occupied territories of the south of mainland Ukraine, asour Association wrote.
From the spring of 2022, Russia has been trying to influence the CSTO’s decision through the organization’s Parliamentary Assembly. In particular, a delegation of this Parliamentary Assembly arrived in Yerevan on June 6, and the speaker of the Russian State Duma Vyacheslav Volodin directly stated the “role of the CSTO Parliamentary Assembly”, in particular on so-called “organizing peacekeeping activities”.
On June 18, before a meeting of the CSTO Committee, Russia involved Ramzan Kadyrov, who said ina traditionally aggressive style that the CSTO was “of no use” in a situation where Russia allegedly“ helps everyone”. Kadyrov said the CSTO was not helping Russia in its aggression against Ukraine because “these countries are afraid of sanctions”.
Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev responded to the “accusation” by saying that his “countrywas saved not by Russia but by CSTO members” and that “some people in Russia are turning the situation around by saying that Russia saved Kazakhstan and Kazakhstan should now to serve and bow at the feet of Russia forever”.
Mykhailo Podoliak, an adviser to the head of the Office of the President of Ukraine, later stated that Russia had failed to involve the CSTO in the war in Ukraine because the Kremlin’s allies did not want to be on the same level as war criminals.
Indeed, the above-mentioned meeting of the CSTO Committee of Secretaries decided on various“ areas of work”, such as combating mercenaries and “improving biological protection”, but the issue of “peacekeepers” of interest to the aggressor was apparently not included in the decision. It was stated that in the autumn of 2022 at a meeting of the statutory bodies and the CSTO session will beraised the issue of “improving the crisis response system”.
It is noteworthy that the chairman of the CSTO meeting on June 20 was Armenian Security Council Secretary Armen Grigoryan, who, although not far from cooperating with the “Russian world” in Yerevan, can hardly be described as a direct “Kremlin agent”.
It is noteworthy that for several months in a row, Russian special services have put pressure on the Armenian authorities both by swinging “protests” in Yerevan and by initiating provocations that hinder the settlement of the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict. We have already written about the fiasco of the “visit” to Yerevan of Georgiy Muradov, the fake “Crimean representative” of the Russian occupiers, whose agenda was apparently ignored by the authorities of this Caucasian republic.
According to the circles close to these individuals, these attempts will continue, and the aggressor will continue to use fake “Crimean emissaries” to criminally “deepen contacts” in Armenia and Belarus on CSTO issues, which the Kremlin considers urgent.
At the same time, Kazakhstan is becoming the main opponent of Russia’s proposals in the CSTO. On June 5, Alnur Musayev, a former chairman of Kazakhstan’s National Security Committee living in Austria, “released” information that Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan had “surrendered”, as he says, under Russian pressure and expressed confidence at the confidential level to provide military assistance tothe aggressor.
Musaev said Russia was putting unprecedented pressure on Kazakhstan to side with it in it saggression against Ukraine, including “direct talks between Kazakhstan’s Defense Ministry and representatives of Russia’s armed forces”.
Also in the spring of 2022, Russia is putting pressure on Kazakhstan by creating all sorts of “circumstances” that hinder the stable operation of the “Caspian Pipeline Consortium” maritime terminal in Novorossiysk. At the same time, both sides pretend that these “circumstances”, including sudden “demining” and “technical problems”, have nothing to do with “political issues”, which have been stated several times by Kazakh officials.
At the same time, it is reported that Kazakhstan and even the regime of the Belarusian dictator Lukashenko have stopped transporting sanctioned Russian goods, including coal, on the railways of these countries. At the same time, Putin’s visit to Belarus at the end of June was announced, during which the aggressor will apparently issue another ultimatum to the Lukashenko regime.
Under these circumstances, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov’s June 20 statement that “the possibility of involving CSTO forces in a special military operation in Ukraine has not been considered” is nothing more than an attempt to “blindfold” and lull vigilance.
Apparently, Russia will continue to try to “pass” through the CSTO some “documents” that it will continue to manipulate, especially in the international arena, allegedly “a form of legalization” of it sactions in the occupied territories of Ukraine to allegedly “share responsibility” for aggression war crimes by “mission”, at least formally, so to speak, “on paper”.
In addition, Putin’s “raising rates” could be an imaginary, conditional “increase in the level of confrontation” between the aggressor and Ukraine and Western countries in the war and the strugglefor the notorious “Russian hegemony”, including Poland, Romania, Bulgaria and the Baltics, constructed by the Kremlin to the rank of a kind of “confrontation” between NATO and the CSTO.
