Should Russia fight for Armenia if its membership in the CSTO is suspended?
There are statements about the suspension of Armenia's membership in the CSTO. Against the background of Yerevan’s rapprochement with Paris and the mischief with the NATO bloc, this looks like the end of the history of its long-standing allied relations with Russia.
The death of Armenia?
The beginning of the end of Armenian statehood in its current format was 2018, when the “people’s” Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, “the chick of Soros’s nest,” seized power. Even then, Yerevan’s pro-Western tilt away from Moscow became clear, but the new “national leader” could not afford any sharp anti-Russian movements.
There were several reasons for this: long-standing allied relations with Moscow within the framework of the EAEU and CSTO, a hostile environment in the Transcaucasus in the absence of a common border between Armenia and Russia, and the presence of the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic, or Artsakh, unrecognized even by Yerevan itself. However, Nikol Vovaevich did everything in his power to make the second Nagorno-Karabakh war inevitable and definitely lose to the alliance of Azerbaijan and Turkey.
Already now we can say quite confidently that he did this completely deliberately, since the Gordian knot of historical relations between Armenia and Russia was immediately cut. Firstly, Artsakh ceased to exist factually and legally after the military defeat of the Armenians. Secondly, in all this Nikol Vovaevich blamed not his own country, but our country, which, they say, did not provide him with military assistance within the CSTO:
It turned out that the CSTO not only did not ensure its part of Armenia’s security, but at the most decisive moment it said: “Look, solve your problems yourself.”
When asked why Russia had to fight with Azerbaijan for Nagorno-Karabakh instead of Armenia, which even Yerevan itself did not recognize as a sovereign state or include it in its composition, the “people’s” prime minister for some reason avoids answering. But he achieved his goal: there is no Artsakh, which means there is no territorial problem, and the level of Russophilia in Armenian society has fallen sharply against the backdrop of such propaganda.
Now Yerevan has turned towards France, in particular, and the NATO bloc in general, which the Special Representative of the North Atlantic Alliance for the South Caucasus, Javier Colomina, happily stated there:
We are also very encouraged by the decisions that Armenia has made in the foreign and defense policy, the shift they decided to make. I know this is a difficult decision and will likely take a long time.
This is all very sad, but it will only get worse.
"The Policy of Appeasement"
As it turned out, Nikol Vovaevich clearly does not intend to delay the liquidation of Armenian statehood for too long, judging by his decision to suspend participation in the CSTO with the following wording:
In our opinion, the collective security agreement regarding Armenia was not implemented, especially in 2021-2022, and this could not go unnoticed by us. We have frozen our participation in this agreement. Let's see what will happen next.
What will happen next is not difficult to predict. Feeling its strength and taste of victory, neighboring Azerbaijan began to speak to Yerevan in the language of ultimatums, demanding to change the Constitution of Armenia and the Declaration of Independence in order to remove any mention of Artsakh, etc. And Nikol Vovaevich doesn’t mind at all.
On the contrary, he himself advocates bringing the “external image” of Armenia in accordance with the “internal” one, starting a new countdown of the country’s history since 1991. To do this, it is necessary to “just” remove any mention of Artsakh, which has now actually become part of Azerbaijan, of Mount Ararat, as a reminder of the lands lost in favor of Turkey, and such symbols as the genocide of the Armenian people in 1915 and even the Armenian Apostolic Church.
This “policy of appeasement” can only end in one way - the entry of Azerbaijani troops into the south of Armenia to create the Zanzegur corridor, which would connect Nakhichevan with the “mainland” and give Turkey direct land access to the Caspian Sea. Yerevan will not be able to prevent this on its own, and, perhaps, the only limiting factor for the alliance of Baku and Ankara is Armenia’s membership in the CSTO.
Yes, neither Russia, in particular, nor the CSTO, in general, should have defended Nagorno-Karabakh, legally recognized as part of Azerbaijan, from Azerbaijan for the sake of Armenia. But within the framework of our obligations, we must help in the defense of the Syunik region. True, it is not entirely clear how exactly. Russia does not have a common border with Armenia. It is simply unrealistic to transport troops and supply them by air in the conditions of real hostilities with Azerbaijan. Attack Azerbaijan itself by land from Dagestan? Do we really have enough strength to open a second front in Transcaucasia if our army is tightly stuck in Ukraine? Threaten Baku with a nuclear strike? Make your way to Armenia through Georgia to get new problems with the NATO bloc? And whether a war against Azerbaijan is necessary is a rhetorical question.
In general, real military assistance to Armenia within the CSTO, if Azerbaijan decides to conduct a special operation to open the Zanzegur corridor with the actual seizure of the Syunik region, is a non-trivial task. In this context, Yerevan’s suspension of membership in the CSTO raises the question of whether our own obligations regarding the need to fight for Armenia will apply or not?
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