Putin puts his pen to the table at the group’s latest summit, while Armenia refuses to sign the final statement
The formal reason for the disagreement organized on Wednesday in Yerevan (Armenia) by Russian President Vladimir Putin and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinián was again the situation in the Nagorno-Karabakh enclave and the ongoing armed clashes with security forces. armed forces. Azerbaijan. For Pashinian it is the last straw that broke the camel’s back. But in the background also plays the war in Ukraine, which has damaged the cohesion between the members of the so-called Organization of the Collective Security Treaty (ODKB in Russian), a kind of NATO led by Russia, founded in 1992 and which also belong to Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan.
After the bloc summit held in the Armenian capital on Wednesday, Pashinián refused to sign the final statement in front of Putin, who at the time threw his pen on the table in disgust and signed neither the document nor the project to destroy Armenia. help the Nagorno-Karabagh conflict. Both texts now need to be redrafted. The Armenian leader stated that “at this point, I believe that the draft declaration submitted for signature (…) has not been sufficiently elaborated and therefore, with all due respect, I am not ready to sign.” He thanked those present and got up from the table to 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 the territorial integrity from Armenia. In his words, “Over the past two years, Armenia, a member country of the ODKB, has been the target of aggression by Azerbaijan at least three times.”
“It is depressing that Armenian membership in 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 an evaluative statement after the generalized attacks by the ODKB. Azerbaijani troops. “These events greatly damage the image of the ODKB, both in our country and abroad,” emphasized the Armenian Prime Minister, who in recent days had to reflect on protest demonstrations in Yerevan with a request to leave the country due to his inability to resolve conflicts. avoid and stop the attacks of the troops from Baku.
Armenia and Azerbaijan waged a war in the fall of 2020 over control of Nagorno Karabagh, territory under Azerbaijani sovereignty but always inhabited by Armenians. The match was won by Azerbaijan and Moscow intervened so that the parties signed a peace agreement, which was not well received in Yerevan. Many unresolved issues remained in the air, such as the release of all prisoners and the new border route, an issue that has sporadically led to armed confrontations; the last, on September 13, the most violent aggression since the end of the war in 2020, with the deaths of more than 200 soldiers on both sides. Hostilities were then ended with another mediation by Russia, which still has a contingent of “peacekeeping” troops numbering nearly 2,000 in a sector of Nagorno-Karabakh, the only one not controlled by Azerbaijan.
The incident in Yerevan with the rejection of Pashinyan’s signature is not the only thing that affects 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 St 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 at the border between troops 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 help from the Russian army fairly quickly was Kazakhstan during the uprising that broke out there in early January.
Talking to the BBC, political scientist Anatoli Nesmiyan believes Russia is no longer able to maintain its influence in Transcaucasia and Central Asia. In his opinion, “all this is very reminiscent of the situation before the breakup of the USSR”, when Moscow lost control of the republics that would later become independent, thereby burying the Soviet Union. Nesmiyan estimates that Russia’s current collapse from the invasion of Ukraine “causes it to lose opportunities to participate in decisions in its former areas of interest”.
And it is that Russia’s international reputation after the attack on Ukraine is such that many members of the ODKB are beginning to distance themselves from Moscow. Apart from the Belarusian dictator, Alexander Lukashenko, none of the leaders of the bloc’s member countries support the invasion of Ukraine. In Yerevan, Kazakhstan’s recently re-elected president Kasim-Zhomart Tokayev said at the summit that “as far as Ukraine is concerned, I believe it is time for a collective search for a formula for peace. Every war ends with negotiations. Every opportunity must be taken to reach at least a truce.” “We must not allow the brotherly peoples of Russia and Ukraine to remain separated for decades or hundreds of years with unresolved mutual grievances,” he stressed.
Source: La Verdad
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