Senior Armenian Lawmakers Rule Out CSTO Deployment to Ukraine

YEREVAN — Senior Armenian lawmakers expressed confidence on Monday that troops from the Russian-led Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) will not be sent to Ukraine to reinforce the invading Russian forces.

“It’s important to point out that CSTO mechanisms are activated when a CSTO member states is attacked,” said Vahagn Aleksanyan of the ruling Civil Contract party. “I don’t think that the hostilities [in Ukraine] are likely to move to the territory of the Russian Federation, at least at this point.”

Eduard Aghajanyan, another Civil Contract figure heading the Armenian parliament committee on foreign relations, dismissed speculation about possible CSTO involvement in the war in Ukraine as a “hypothetical, non-existent agenda.”

Moscow has so far given no indications that it might seek a CSTO operation in Ukraine.

Only one non-Russian member of the military alliance, Belarus, is involved in the war, having served as a launch pad for Russian troops advancing towards the Ukrainian capital Kyiv.

The other CSTO member states — Armenia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan — have refrained from publicly backing the Russian invasion. They all abstained last week from voting on a UN General Assembly resolution that demanded an immediate Russian withdrawal from Ukraine.

As recently as in early January, Russia and its CSTO allies sent more than 2,000 troops to Kazakhstan after being called in to help stabilize the Central Asian nation rocked by deadly unrest. It was their first ever joint military operation.

While agreeing to dispatch some 100 Armenian soldiers to Kazakhstan, Armenian leaders chided the bloc for not responding similarly to their request for military aid made after last year’s Azerbaijani incursions into Armenian territory.