Pashinyan loses his last allies
Armenia loses its last allies
By Abdul Kerimkhanov
The occupation by Armenia of the territories of Azerbaijan and its reluctance to achieve peace to the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, has turned into a headache for Yerevan.
The CSTO countries believe that the goal of this military bloc is to protect the territorial-economic space of the states, that are parties to the treaty, by joint efforts of the armies and auxiliary units from any external aggressors, and not to protect the interests of Armenia, which itself is the aggressor in light of its occupation policy in Karabakh.
It is surprising how much the prospect of losing the post of CSTO Secretary General put the country into a panic. Everyone, even those who previously fought hysterically, demanding that Armenia withdraw from this organization and from all other Eurasian structures, came to their senses and realized that they were losing. Both former authorities, and former opposition, and human rights activists insisted that the post of the CSTO Secretary General remain with Armenia. And this is understandable, because losing the position of the CSTO Secretary General, Armenia loses the most important factor of military-strategic development in this organization.
The fact that even their allies are not considered to be the interests of Armenia is that President of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko negotiated issues discussed during the meeting in Astana with the Ambassador of Azerbaijan to Belarus Latif Gandilov. He declared that Nikol Pashinyan just has to deal with the situation in the government because this country today heads the EAEU and the CSTO - a very large burden on a country that is in such a transition period and expressed doubt whther Armenia will cope with it or not. In turn, Latif Gandilov notified the President of Belarus that Ilham Aliyev will visit Belarus next week.
However, not only Belarus is so scornful of the Armenian authorities. Speaking at the 2018 Astana CSTO Summit, the President of the host country, Nursultan Nazarbayev, said that all the same, the quota of Armenia is left to act only one year and the new Secretary General will not even have time to go through all the member countries of the organization. Nazarbayev noted at a press conference after the meeting, the parties are inclined to hand over the post of Belarus, which follows Armenia in alphabetical order.
Moreover, a graduate of the Baku Higher Command School with great connections in the Azerbaijani military leadership Stanislav Zas was offered the position of the Secretary General. This is clear evidence that the CSTO member-countries -- Belarus and Kazakhstan -- do not hide their sympathy for Azerbaijan. This finally upset the Armenians. But they are no stranger to getting upset.
As a result of the Astana summit, Yerevan was unable to retain the post of the head of the CSTO and practically cannot influence the possibility of expanding this organization, in particular, accepting Azerbaijan as an observer. Demonstrative and careless attitude to the interests of Armenia was an adequate response to the same dismissive attitude of Yerevan towards the CSTO in the history of Khachaturov.
The consequence of the occupation of part of the territory of Azerbaijan was not only the economic isolation of Armenia but also political, diplomatic and military gaps in relations between Yerevan and its allied countries.
Thus, it is not hard to come to a conclusion that Azerbaijan, not being a member of the CSTO, has a greater influence in the CSTO than Armenia.
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Abdul Kerimkhanov is AzerNews’ staff journalist, follow him on Twitter: @AbdulKerim94
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