PM Pashinyan Chairing CSTO Session: “Not Long Ago, We Ourselves Encountered Foreign Terrorists in Our Region.”

YEREVAN — An extraordinary session of the CSTO Collective Security Council chaired by the Chairman of the CSTO Collective Security Council, Prime Minister of the Republic of Armenia Nikol Pashinyan took place on Monday, the agenda of which included the issue “On the situation in the Republic of Kazakhstan and measures to resolve it.”

PM Pashinyan expressed hope that troops sent by Russia, Armenia and other members of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) will help Kazakhstan end domestic unrest as he chaired the virtual summit.

“We hope that the efforts within the framework of the CSTO aimed at assisting friendly Kazakhstan will help restore the country’s normal life in the shortest possible time,” Pashinyan told the emergency video conference.

“The purposefulness of our actions towards the earliest possible stabilization of the situation and the return of the country to normal life is obvious,” he said. “This is a critical moment for ensuring basic living conditions for citizens and the security of strategically important facilities.”

“We continue to face new types of threats. The situation in the Republic of Kazakhstan is of particular concern to us in terms of receiving information on the involvement of international terrorist organizations. Not long ago, we ourselves encountered foreign terrorists in our region.” Pashinyan said referring to the participation of terrorist group on the Azerbaijani side during 44-day Artsakh war in 2020.

Cities throughout Kazakhstan have been struck by protests that initially erupted in the western region of Mangystau on January 2 over the doubling in the price of subsidized liquefied petroleum gas (LPG). Kazakh President Qasym-Zhomart Toqaev asked the CSTO for urgent intervention on January 5 as mobs stormed government buildings and looted businesses in his country’s largest city, Almaty.

The military bloc responded by sending more than 2,000 mostly Russian peacekeeping troops. They are understood to have been deployed in and around Almaty.

Speaking at the CSTO summit, Toqaev said calm has returned to Kazakhstan after days of violence described by him as “terrorist aggression” and “attempted a coup d’etat.”

Putin likewise claimed that “terrorists” are using social media networks to bring people out into the streets of Kazakhstan as a cover for their attacks. CSTO troops will stymie any attempts by external forces to topple governments within the alliance, he said.