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On August 12, Russian public figure, well-known propagandist of the government, Sergey Mardan, shared false information on “Solovyov Live” program.
In particular, he raised the following questions: Where is the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO)? Where are the statements of the CSTO member states?
“I am not a diplomat, but I have a question for our allies: How are you?” Well, we hear various blasting statements from Belarus, but I wonder where the statements of Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan are. Armenia has frozen its membership in the CSTO, but actively expressed dissatisfaction that the CSTO did not participate in the Second Karabakh War, in which, by the way, Armenia did not participate. It did not participate, but Russia should have participated. Well, Armenians were supposed to eat dolma in restaurants in Yerevan,” said the Russian propagandist.
Note that such discussions started in Russia after the armed forces of Ukraine invaded the Kursk region of the Russian Federation on August 6, occupying Russian settlements and positioning themselves on the territory of the Russian Federation.
Firstly, Armenia could not complain that the CSTO did not take part in the Second Karabakh war, because the CSTO really could not intervene in the hostilities in the territory of Nagorno Karabakh in 2020 for the simple reason that Nagorno Karabakh is not considered an internationally recognized territory of the Republic of Armenia. Armenia was unhappy with CSTO, as described by the Kremlin propagandist Mardan, because of the violations of the border of Armenia in May 2021 and then in September 2022 as a result of Azerbaijan’s armed aggression.
Note that the CSTO is a military-political organization, which curently has 6 member states: Armenia, Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. The purpose of the organization is to collectively ensure the security of member states. The principle is as follows: an attack on any of the participating countries is considered an attack on all member states of the organization.
Meanwhile, on May 12, 2021, the armed forces of Azerbaijan violated the Armenian-Azerbaijani border and invaded the territory of Armenia, advancing 3 km into the territory of Armenia in some sections. The RA Prime Minister described the situation as “on the verge of exploding” at the session of the RA Security Council. On May 14, Armenia officially appealed to the CSTO about the situation, but there was no response from the organization.
“The current situation fully corresponds to paragraph 2 of Article 2 of the CSTO Charter, according to which “in case of menace to safety, stability, territorial integrity and sovereignty of one or several Member States or menace to international peace and safety, the Member States shall immediately launch the mechanism of joint consultations for the purpose of their positions coordination, develop and take measures for assistance to such Member States for the purpose of elimination of the arisen menace,” Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan announced at the session of the Security Council.
Neither did CSTO provide any efficient support during the next escalation on the Armenian-Azerbaijani border in September 2022. At that time, official Yerevan appealed to the CSTO and Russia for military support. However, after the Kremin and the CSTO essentially rejected Armenia’s request for help, the CSTO decided to merely send monitoring missions to Armenia. CSTO General Secretary Stanislav Zas also visited the border areas. Shortly after the visit, it was announced that CSTO has no plans to send troops to Armenia.
Due to this circumstance, Prime Minister of the Republic of Armenia announced in an interview with France 24 on February 22: “In our opinion, the Collective Security Treaty Organization has not fulfilled its security obligations towards the Republic of Armenia, specifically in 2021 and 2022. And this could not but have consequences. And, in practice, the consequence is that we have essentially frozen our participation in the Collective Security Treaty Organization.We will see what will happen in the future.“
The other statement of the Russian government propagandist that Armenia did not participate in the Second Karabakh War is simply a lie. The Second Karabakh War is considered the 44-day war that lasted from September 27 to November 9, 2020, as a result of which Armenia had more than 3,800 military casualties.
Thus, the well-known Russian propagandist Sergey Mardan has shared apparently false information during “Solovyov Live” (its live broadcasts have more than 5,000 views, with several hundred thousand subscriptions to the channels).
Hasmik Hambardzumyan
