“I understand the rules of the game in the CSTO, even though there are many questions, but in this case I do not understand the rules”, said Stepan Grigoryan, political scientist, Chairman of the “Centre for Globalization and Regional Cooperation”, touching upon the agreement on the united armed grouping of the Armenian Armed Forces and Russian Armed Forces recently ratified by the parliament.
Let us remind that the Russian side ratified the agreement several months ago. In the Armenian parliament, only members of the “Yelq” faction voted against the creation of this military unit.
According to the agreement, the purpose of the united group is to “ensure military security in the region”: particularly, “to discover and prevent the preparation of an armed attack against Armenia and Russia at the borders of the region, in cooperation with army troops, military formations and bodies of the both countries”. The agreement does not regulate the structure of the united military unit. It is not clear yet. The agreement stipulates that the Commander of the Armenian-Russian united military group will be appointed and dismissed by the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Armenia in agreement with the Commander-in-Chief of the Russian Armed Forces if the commander is subordinate to the Head of the Armenian Armed Forces Staff. In case of an aggression, immediate threat, war, the commander of the Armenian-Russian united military group depending on the situation is subordinate to Head of the Armenian Armed Forces Staff or the commander of the South Military Forces. The question at this point should be decided by the chief commanders of Armenia and Russia. There is also another option: to manage it together.
The main concern of the political scientist is that, according to this agreement, the Russian side will have some control over the exact division of the Armed Forces of Armenia: “I think we are mostly handing some of our sovereignty over rather than acquiring any positive impact”. Stepan Grigoryan does not think that in case of an aggression, the Russian side will assist Armenia provided that Russia continues to sell weapons to Azerbaijan and Turkey. The political scientist does not think that the developments will be only negative scenarios. But he thinks that the Armenian side should pay particular attention to those scenarios: “I do not want to believe that if there is a military operation, the united troop will not support Armenia. I hope it will support. But if there is a possibility that it will not support, I demand the point to be changed. For example, I think that we should not give a chance to Russian generals lead the troop. One billion is a good sum. Even an Armenian general may be attracted by one billion. If there is a military operation, Azerbaijanis and Turks will come and offer a billion to the Russian general. What will prevail?”, said the political scientist.
He regards the collaborative management as the worst option because it can lead to irresponsibility.
By the way, the fact that during the CSTO exercises on Saturday, the Head of the CSTO Staff stated that the CSTO will support Armenia during a war, the political scientist connects to the reaction of the critical sentiments in Armenia towards CSTO.
Nelly GRIGORYAN
