ussia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine has proved to be a deeply costly undertaking for the Russian armed forces in terms of materiel, manpower, and prestige. Along with it, the attention and bandwidth of the Russian state has increasingly been devoted to supporting the invasion. This has had consequences, not just in the redirection of state resources from domestic projects, but also in Russia’s existing network of military projects in Eurasia. In particular, 2022 was a true annus horribilis for the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), a military alliance of six states in the post-Soviet space.
On the eve of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the CSTO appeared to be at a zenith in its relevance as a security institution and in its cohesiveness. After mass protests exploded across Kazakhstan in the first days of 2022, Kazakhstani President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev officially requested the deployment of CSTO peacekeepers to his country to shore up his government’s position. Tokayev’s request was premised on the supposed presence of foreign-trained “terrorist threats” in the unrest, which the CSTO Collective Security Council (made up of member-state heads of state) seized on to approve sending Collective peacekeeping forces to the country on 6 January 2022, a day after Tokayev made his appeal for assistance.
As the first such utilization of CSTO troops, this deployment appeared to inject new life into the bloc. While the bulk of the force dispatched to Kazakhstan was made up of Russian troops, it included contingents from the other five members (Kazakhstan, Belarus, Armenia, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan) of the bloc. As the protests dispersed and government buildings and infrastructure that had been seized by protesters retaken, the CSTO force departed as nimbly as it had come by mid-January. To the autocratic leaders in the bloc such as Russia’s Vladimir Putin and Belarus’ Alexander Lukashenko, the defining lesson of the January 2022 episode in Kazakhstan was that the CSTO had proven itself as a valuable tool in squashing unrest perceived to be Western-fomented (as Moscow often characterizes it to be).
However, time would quickly show that Kazakhstan’s 2022 unrest was not to be the CSTO’s main trial. Despite Putin’s dubious framing of the invasion of Ukraine as a defensive action, none of Russia’s CSTO allies agreed to become active participants in the invasion, with some going as far to directly swear off the possibility of taking part, sometimes even providing limited support to Ukraine themselves. In the first weeks of the war, Kyrgyzstan’s Security Council officially ruled out sending Kyrgyzstani troops to fight in any hypothetical CSTO operation in Ukraine. Kazakhstan also conclusively dismissed the possibility of participating in a CSTO mission in Ukraine, citing its respect for territorial integrity of states as a foundational element of its foreign policy. Tokayev’s government even went so far as to send humanitarian aid to Ukraine. Tajikistan and Armenia pointedly remained silent on the issue.
While Russia never publicly requested CSTO assistance with its invasion, the Kremlin possibly intended that it could play a role in a postwar settlement after a planned-for Russian victory. In March, Putin submitted a draft law on the ratification of the CSTO protocol adopted at the organization’s September 2021 Dushanbe summit that would allow the CSTO to participate in UN peacekeeping missions as an organization. The timing of this submission in the first days of the Russian invasion possibly indicates that Moscow hoped that CSTO troops under Russian guidance would help police the settlement of what Russia expected would be a short, victorious adventure. However, even after the ratification of the protocol by the Federation Council and State Duma, this possibility of CSTO involvement in a Ukrainian peace settlement has not gained any traction, and the war remains far from over.
After the negative reaction of Russia’s CSTO treaty allies to Moscow’s invasion became abundantly clear, what was left of the visage of alliance cohesion was dispelled by two separate crises that placed immense pressure on the alliance treaty’s collective security article. The first of these was actually a continuation of a series of clashes between non-CSTO Azerbaijan and Armenia along their shared border (with major flare-ups in May, July, and November 2021) following Azerbaijan’s victory in a short but sharp war which saw Armenian and Armenian-backed separatist forces pushed out of much of the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region of Azerbaijan. Major clashes in September 2022 saw Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan officially request military aid from its CSTO allies under Article 4 of the alliance’s foundational treaty, citing Azerbaijani attacks on its sovereign territory. However, instead of its hoped-for CSTO force, Armenia’s request was instead met with a promise that a “fact-finding” mission would be dispatched to the region. Frustration with Russia and other CSTO members’ unwillingness to come to Armenia’s aid has sparked domestic calls for Armenia to buck the alliance, and Pashinyan pointedly refused in November to sign onto a draft declaration and “joint assistance measures” proposed by the CSTO in response to Armenia’s request, and Pashinyan announced in January 2023 that CSTO exercises could not occur in the near-term future on Armenian territory.
The other major test of the CSTO’s cohesion was the short and sharp border conflict fought by Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan on and off throughout the year, although the most serious escalation occurred almost simultaneously with the September flare-up between Armenia and Azerbaijan. Such clashes between the two CSTO members set off alarm bells in Moscow, with Vladimir Putin personally pressuring Dushanbe and Bishkek to agree to a ceasefire. Putin would subsequently host discussions in October between Kyrgyzstani President Sadyr Japarov and Tajikistani President Enomali Rahmon in October in an attempt to reach a settlement. Shortly before the mid-October talks, Kyrgyzstan officially canceled CSTO mid-October exercises it was due to host, and pulled out of the “Frontier-2022” exercises hosted by Tajikistan shortly thereafter. Nonetheless, Kyrgyzstan’s Defense Minister subsequently appealed to CSTO Secretary General Stanislav Zas for a “small peacekeeping force” to be deployed to the disputed border region to police the ceasefire between Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. Similar to Armenia’s case, this was not the first time the alliance had denied a Kyrgyzstani request for assistance in a moment of crisis.
The only CSTO state to arguably deepen its faith in the alliance and its military relationship with Russia over the course of last year is Belarus. Even before the February invasion, Belarus’ “multi-vector” foreign policy had been effectively discarded as a result of Minsk’s diplomatic isolation in the wake of Lukashenko’s fraudulent reelection and heavy-handed suppression of protests in 2020. Belarus allowed Russia to launch the northern axis of its invasion from its territory and more recently has been host to a growing contingent of Russian troops in recent months, which stands in contrast to Lukashenko’s previous resistance to significant amounts of Russian troops being based in Belarus. However, while Minsk has called for the CSTO states to overcome their differences in order to strengthen the bloc, its military cooperation with Russia in the context of the Ukraine invasion has been on the basis of their unique “Union State” arrangement, separate from the CSTO. The most recent buildup of Russian troops in Belarus which began in earnest in the fall of 2022 under the Union State framework of a joint “regional group of forces,” rather than a CSTO formation such as the alliance’s Collective Rapid Reaction Forces.
Although trust in the CSTO’s ability to ensure collective security among the alliance’s non-Russian members is at a historical nadir, predictions that the bloc is set to break apart are premature. On a basic level, the events of 2022 starkly clarified the limits of what the CSTO can do on a collective basis. They ultimately revealed that the only actions the bloc can be expected to take collectively in its current state are those designed to suppress uprisings in member states. Nonetheless, as Russia’s desired utilization of the CSTO as an instrument of a planned post-war settlement in Ukraine and the appeals of memberstates for alliance support show, member states have not resigned themselves to relegating the CSTO to a regime-security mechanism. Regional security realities and certain benefits to Russian security patronage reinforce the foundational durability of the CSTO as a bloc, despite the challenges of 2022. While the limited utility of the CSTO alliance has been revealed by Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine and the regional crises which followed it, it is unlikely that the alliance will disappear as an entity in the foreseeable future.
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Ukraine War Proves Difficult Test for Russia’s CSTO
Destroyed Russian tanker in Ukraine. Photo by Dmitry Bukhantsov via Unsplash.
February 27, 2023
Russia's invasion of Ukraine has in many ways been disastrous for the Kremlin. One way that isn't often talked about is what it's done to Russia's Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), which is showing significant disunity in the face of the war, writes Wesley Culp.
R
ussia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine has proved to be a deeply costly undertaking for the Russian armed forces in terms of materiel, manpower, and prestige. Along with it, the attention and bandwidth of the Russian state has increasingly been devoted to supporting the invasion. This has had consequences, not just in the redirection of state resources from domestic projects, but also in Russia’s existing network of military projects in Eurasia. In particular, 2022 was a true annus horribilis for the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), a military alliance of six states in the post-Soviet space.
On the eve of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the CSTO appeared to be at a zenith in its relevance as a security institution and in its cohesiveness. After mass protests exploded across Kazakhstan in the first days of 2022, Kazakhstani President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev officially requested the deployment of CSTO peacekeepers to his country to shore up his government’s position. Tokayev’s request was premised on the supposed presence of foreign-trained “terrorist threats” in the unrest, which the CSTO Collective Security Council (made up of member-state heads of state) seized on to approve sending Collective peacekeeping forces to the country on 6 January 2022, a day after Tokayev made his appeal for assistance.
As the first such utilization of CSTO troops, this deployment appeared to inject new life into the bloc. While the bulk of the force dispatched to Kazakhstan was made up of Russian troops, it included contingents from the other five members (Kazakhstan, Belarus, Armenia, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan) of the bloc. As the protests dispersed and government buildings and infrastructure that had been seized by protesters retaken, the CSTO force departed as nimbly as it had come by mid-January. To the autocratic leaders in the bloc such as Russia’s Vladimir Putin and Belarus’ Alexander Lukashenko, the defining lesson of the January 2022 episode in Kazakhstan was that the CSTO had proven itself as a valuable tool in squashing unrest perceived to be Western-fomented (as Moscow often characterizes it to be).
However, time would quickly show that Kazakhstan’s 2022 unrest was not to be the CSTO’s main trial. Despite Putin’s dubious framing of the invasion of Ukraine as a defensive action, none of Russia’s CSTO allies agreed to become active participants in the invasion, with some going as far to directly swear off the possibility of taking part, sometimes even providing limited support to Ukraine themselves. In the first weeks of the war, Kyrgyzstan’s Security Council officially ruled out sending Kyrgyzstani troops to fight in any hypothetical CSTO operation in Ukraine. Kazakhstan also conclusively dismissed the possibility of participating in a CSTO mission in Ukraine, citing its respect for territorial integrity of states as a foundational element of its foreign policy. Tokayev’s government even went so far as to send humanitarian aid to Ukraine. Tajikistan and Armenia pointedly remained silent on the issue.
While Russia never publicly requested CSTO assistance with its invasion, the Kremlin possibly intended that it could play a role in a postwar settlement after a planned-for Russian victory. In March, Putin submitted a draft law on the ratification of the CSTO protocol adopted at the organization’s September 2021 Dushanbe summit that would allow the CSTO to participate in UN peacekeeping missions as an organization. The timing of this submission in the first days of the Russian invasion possibly indicates that Moscow hoped that CSTO troops under Russian guidance would help police the settlement of what Russia expected would be a short, victorious adventure. However, even after the ratification of the protocol by the Federation Council and State Duma, this possibility of CSTO involvement in a Ukrainian peace settlement has not gained any traction, and the war remains far from over.
After the negative reaction of Russia’s CSTO treaty allies to Moscow’s invasion became abundantly clear, what was left of the visage of alliance cohesion was dispelled by two separate crises that placed immense pressure on the alliance treaty’s collective security article. The first of these was actually a continuation of a series of clashes between non-CSTO Azerbaijan and Armenia along their shared border (with major flare-ups in May, July, and November 2021) following Azerbaijan’s victory in a short but sharp war which saw Armenian and Armenian-backed separatist forces pushed out of much of the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region of Azerbaijan. Major clashes in September 2022 saw Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan officially request military aid from its CSTO allies under Article 4 of the alliance’s foundational treaty, citing Azerbaijani attacks on its sovereign territory. However, instead of its hoped-for CSTO force, Armenia’s request was instead met with a promise that a “fact-finding” mission would be dispatched to the region. Frustration with Russia and other CSTO members’ unwillingness to come to Armenia’s aid has sparked domestic calls for Armenia to buck the alliance, and Pashinyan pointedly refused in November to sign onto a draft declaration and “joint assistance measures” proposed by the CSTO in response to Armenia’s request, and Pashinyan announced in January 2023 that CSTO exercises could not occur in the near-term future on Armenian territory.
The other major test of the CSTO’s cohesion was the short and sharp border conflict fought by Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan on and off throughout the year, although the most serious escalation occurred almost simultaneously with the September flare-up between Armenia and Azerbaijan. Such clashes between the two CSTO members set off alarm bells in Moscow, with Vladimir Putin personally pressuring Dushanbe and Bishkek to agree to a ceasefire. Putin would subsequently host discussions in October between Kyrgyzstani President Sadyr Japarov and Tajikistani President Enomali Rahmon in October in an attempt to reach a settlement. Shortly before the mid-October talks, Kyrgyzstan officially canceled CSTO mid-October exercises it was due to host, and pulled out of the “Frontier-2022” exercises hosted by Tajikistan shortly thereafter. Nonetheless, Kyrgyzstan’s Defense Minister subsequently appealed to CSTO Secretary General Stanislav Zas for a “small peacekeeping force” to be deployed to the disputed border region to police the ceasefire between Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. Similar to Armenia’s case, this was not the first time the alliance had denied a Kyrgyzstani request for assistance in a moment of crisis.
The only CSTO state to arguably deepen its faith in the alliance and its military relationship with Russia over the course of last year is Belarus. Even before the February invasion, Belarus’ “multi-vector” foreign policy had been effectively discarded as a result of Minsk’s diplomatic isolation in the wake of Lukashenko’s fraudulent reelection and heavy-handed suppression of protests in 2020. Belarus allowed Russia to launch the northern axis of its invasion from its territory and more recently has been host to a growing contingent of Russian troops in recent months, which stands in contrast to Lukashenko’s previous resistance to significant amounts of Russian troops being based in Belarus. However, while Minsk has called for the CSTO states to overcome their differences in order to strengthen the bloc, its military cooperation with Russia in the context of the Ukraine invasion has been on the basis of their unique “Union State” arrangement, separate from the CSTO. The most recent buildup of Russian troops in Belarus which began in earnest in the fall of 2022 under the Union State framework of a joint “regional group of forces,” rather than a CSTO formation such as the alliance’s Collective Rapid Reaction Forces.
Although trust in the CSTO’s ability to ensure collective security among the alliance’s non-Russian members is at a historical nadir, predictions that the bloc is set to break apart are premature. On a basic level, the events of 2022 starkly clarified the limits of what the CSTO can do on a collective basis. They ultimately revealed that the only actions the bloc can be expected to take collectively in its current state are those designed to suppress uprisings in member states. Nonetheless, as Russia’s desired utilization of the CSTO as an instrument of a planned post-war settlement in Ukraine and the appeals of memberstates for alliance support show, member states have not resigned themselves to relegating the CSTO to a regime-security mechanism. Regional security realities and certain benefits to Russian security patronage reinforce the foundational durability of the CSTO as a bloc, despite the challenges of 2022. While the limited utility of the CSTO alliance has been revealed by Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine and the regional crises which followed it, it is unlikely that the alliance will disappear as an entity in the foreseeable future.
