Experts explained the choice of Kyrgyzstan instead of Armenia as a place for the CSTO exercises

The exercises of the peacekeeping forces of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) in Kyrgyzstan will help the country’s authorities cope with domestic political challenges, as they will show their connection with partners in the alliance, Konstantin Zatulin, First Deputy Head of the State Duma Committee on CIS Affairs, Eurasian Integration and Relations with Compatriots, told Vedomosti.

Kyrgyzstan, by agreeing to host the exercises, has demonstrated its loyalty [России и ОДКБ], he believes. “She [Киргизия] while losing nothing. <…> Moreover, like any Central Asian country, it has enough reason to worry about the integrity of Kyrgyzstan itself, which is constantly divided into north and south. In this regard, the CSTO exercises may be just in place – to demonstrate the connection of the ruling forces with partners in the commonwealth,” Zatulin said.

The CSTO will conduct exercises of the peacekeeping forces of the Indestructible Brotherhood 2023 alliance in Kyrgyzstan, informed On February 14, Colonel-General Anatoly Sidorov, Chief of the Joint Staff of the Alliance. According to him, the tasks of post-conflict settlement in the crisis zone and the conduct of a peacekeeping operation will be worked out. These exercises were planned to be held in Armenia, but the republic’s Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said in January that the country would not host them. He explained that the Ministry of Defense considered “in the current situation” it would be inappropriate to carry them out. In addition, Pashinyan proposed replacing Russian peacekeepers in Karabakh with a UN contingent after the expiration of the Russian mandate in 2025.

His statements sounded against the backdrop of the blocking of the Lachin corridor by Azerbaijani activists, where the only road from Armenia to Karabakh passes. The authorities of the unrecognized Nagorno-Karabakh Republic (NKR) reported a shortage of food and medicine in the republic. According to the Azerbaijani authorities, the pretext for blocking the corridor was the need to check cargo to prevent the export of gold from mines controlled by the NKR. Since the autumn of 2022, Azerbaijan and Armenia have declared their desire to sign a peace treaty by the end of 2022, but this has not yet happened.

The CSTO was sympathetic to the position of Yerevan due to the situation in the country, pointed out in January, the alliance’s press secretary Vladimir Zainetdinov. He reported that the CSTO is making every effort to fulfill the approved plans for combat training of troops.

Conducting exercises in Armenia was impossible due to the position of the country’s leadership, demonstrating resentment against the CSTO “not for the first time” and in various forms, Zatulin said. The CSTO exercises are not a one-time event, but a set of events that are held in different countries, it is wrong to focus on the exercises in Kyrgyzstan, Dmitry Stefanovich, a researcher at IMEMO, notes.

“The simplest answer here is because they [учения ОДКБ] did not happen in Kyrgyzstan in 2022. This year they did not happen in Armenia, so the simplest, somewhere even symbolic, is to conduct exercises on the territory of Kyrgyzstan, which will show <…> working condition of the CSTO as an organization,” the expert told Vedomosti.

The CSTO includes six states – Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia and Tajikistan. In October 2022, the exercises “Indestructible Brotherhood – 2022” were supposed to take place in Kyrgyzstan at the Edelweiss training ground, but the Ministry of Defense of the republic canceled them. This decision is a continuation of the critical course “long ago taken” by Kyrgyzstan in relation to the organization, spoke RIA Novosti Director of the Information and Analytical Center for the Study of Socio-Political Processes in the Post-Soviet Space Daria Chizhova.

Representatives of the armed forces of Kyrgyzstan emphasized that the cancellation of the exercises does not mean the country’s withdrawal from the CSTO. “We are them [учения] postponed to a later date. Preparation for them was 99.9%. After the exercises were canceled, they write in social networks that by doing so we reject the CSTO. Nothing like this. We really need the CSTO. It provides a full guarantee against terrorist threats and meets the interests of the national security of our country. In social networks, some forces are trying to push us against the members of the CSTO. Nothing will come of them. We don’t have any disagreements.” declared Chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Republic Erlis Terdibekov.