Summit of fond hopes

PanARMENIAN.Net - However, reconciliation, apparently, did not occur; at close quarters Medvedev did not see Lukashenko, but laughing said that CSTO chairmanship would pass to Belarus in December. “Alexander Lukashenko accepted,” said the Russian head of state. As for the assistance to be rendered to Kyrgyzstan, it seems it will be purely humanitarian, i.e. it won’t be at all. Russia cannot yet interfere in Central Asia: she has too many problems in the Caucasus and beyond its borders. The only thing that Moscow is doing at the moment is preventing the Organization from collapse and trying to make it more effective. Against this background, the statement about the revival of GUAM with possible involvement of Belarus is a quite alarming occurrence. The only thing that Moscow can now rely on is that Ukraine will not “cross the boss”, i.e. she won’t go against Russia. But neither is Yanukovych going to leave GUAM; it is much more peaceful there. GUAM is an almost non-binding organization, while in CSTO almost everything is done at Moscow’s command. Another interesting statement voiced at the summit was that “CSTO can become a second NATO”. Unfortunately for the CSTO members, it’s almost impossible for them to become a second NATO; they have neither material nor political resources. What CSTO can do now is to create (still on paper) Collective Rapid Reaction Force (CRRF), but it is still unknown what they’ll be for and who they’ll help. Probably they will not be able to help anyone, nor will they intervene in CSTO conflicts: there are too many conflicts and no one can guarantee that after the intervention of rapid reaction force the conflicts will lessen, at least by one. Just on the contrary. Last year, back in February, when an agreement on rapid reaction force was signed, it was not clear what these forces will serve for. It is quite possible that the CSTO summit in Moscow in December of the current year will clear the things up. But before then, NATO exercises will be held in Armenia.

Probably the only ones that were satisfied with the summit were the Presidents of Armenia and Russia. Yet, it is hard to say how satisfied they are and what guarantees Serzh Sargsyan received from Dmitry Medvedev in case of aggression from Baku. An illustrative consequence of the summit, oddly enough, was a demonstration by the infamous “Karabakh Liberation Organization”, which tried to burn the Russian and Armenian flags, demanded the closure of the Russian Embassy in Azerbaijan and, most ridiculously, required not to allow Dmitry Medvedev into their country.