CSTO is the key factor of maintaining stability in Eurasia

The military and political situation in the world continues to undergo a profound transformation. The conflict potential is building up in a number of regions directly adjacent to the area of responsibility of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO). The situation in Eastern Europe and in the Middle East is of a special concern. The inner political processes in Afghanistan still remain very complex, and tangible risks persist in the South Caucasus.

The need to further improve the activities

CSTO remains the key factor of preserving the stability in Eurasia, it is capable of assuring the security of the member states. The Organization invariably remains committed to the unification agenda, to finding solutions for comprehensive and long-term settlement of crisis situation mainly by political and diplomatic means. At the same time, today, with account of new political realities, the need to further improve the CSTO activities becomes especially relevant.

In 2024 Kazakhstan gained presidency in CSTO, and the key theme of the year is the continuity and the consistency. The emphasis is made on further building up collective efforts to achieve the four main chartered aims and objectives in the military sphere, on counteracting the existing challenges and threats, on decent positioning of the Organization in the international arena, expanding the interaction of the parliaments. The CSTO Secretariat is focused on comprehensive implementation of the priorities of the Kazakhstan presidency.

In its activities the Organization continues to use the well-established mechanism of multi-tier political consultations. It helps the member states to achieve consensus in assessing the international events, to coordinate their positions on a broad circle of global and regional issues, to promote the agreed actions at the leading international platforms.

The joint declarations of the CSTO member states remain the highly-solicited form of fixing the coordinated position.

Global and regional dimension

Shortly we intend to adopt the draft declarations on the following pressing challenges of global and regional security:

• situation in Afghanistan;
• peaceful use of outer space;
• cooperation in the international information security sphere;
• collective efforts to radically clear the situation in the Middle East and Northern Africa;
• the 80^th anniversary of liberating Belarus from nazi invaders.

CSTO continues to interact with the United Nations Organization with a special focus on peace-makers and counteracting terrorism. Recently the CSTO Secretariat had meetings with the Special Representatives of the UN Secretary-General on Afghanistan (R. Otunbayeva) and Central Asia (K. Imnadze). Through conversations were held on the region, which is of special importance for us – Central Asia in connection with political, social and economic situation in Afghanistan.

The UN is demonstrating significant interest towards active engagement of CSTO into consistent and comprehensive implementation of its global counter-terrorism strategy. With deep satisfaction the Secretariat notes the approval of the traditional resolution on cooperation between UN and CSTO at the 77^th session of the UN General Assembly in November 2022. We are counting on approval of the next resolution at the 79^th session of the UN General Assembly this year.

We are still focused on developing the necessary administrative, legal and organizational framework for integrating the peace-making capabilities of CSTO into the UN activities supporting peace.

In connection with this I would like to sincerely thank all the parliamentary delegations for completion of their national procedure for ratification of the minutes to the Agreement on peace-making activities of CSTO. This document establishing the «coordinator state» institute has now come into force. We made another step on the way to engaging the CSTO peace-makers into the operations under the auspices of UN.

New formats of cooperation and interaction

With account of substantial match of the approaches to the key issues of the international agenda, we are systemically developing the cooperation with CIS and SCO both in bilateral and trilateral formats. Last year the high-ranking officials of CSTO, SCO and CIS had a scheduled meeting in Beijing. Special emphasis was given to practical interaction in the sphere of countering terrorism and extremism, illegal drugs trafficking, cross-border criminal activities, as well as to developing more active cooperation between information and analytical centers.

Afghanistan remains in the focus of our attention, as it is the main hotbed of instability in Central Asia. The Organization continues to monitor the challenges and threats associated with the «Afghan hub», to coordinate the counteracting efforts using the capabilities of the Afghanistan Task Force with the CSTO Council of Foreign Ministers. Certain specialized centers of UN, CIS, SCO and other international organizations already are demonstrating their growing interest towards the activities of this Afghanistan Task Force.

Owing to the political will of the CSTO member states we passed the final stage of coordinating the draft CSTO Target Intergovernmental Program for Tajikistan-Afghanistan border fortification. It includes specific actions focused on strengthening the security in the southern part of the CSTO area of responsibility. We are counting on its adoption at the next session of the CSTO Collective Security Council in the end of this year.

The erosion of the international legal framework for arms control, disarmament and non-proliferation makes this problem especially relevant for our countries. The need for coordinated approaches at multi-lateral international platforms for nuclear non-proliferation, outer space militarization, biological and chemical weapons prohibition was emphasized at the recent consultations of specialists from the CSTO member states. Active development of military applications of the artificial intellect and implementation of autonomous weapon systems raise our special concern.

The problem of assuring international information security requires thorough collective attention nowadays. The mechanism for developing common positions and balanced approaches in this sphere for the relevant international platforms (mainly, in UN) was launched in CSTO.

We maintain our focused effort to strengthen the power components of our Organization. This year we intend to have several events focused on improving the readiness of military component of CSTO collective forces and improving the legal framework for their rapid deployment. This was the key topic on the agenda of the CSTO Council of Defence Ministers meeting on May 31. The important outcome was the adoption of the Joint Plan for preparing the control bodies and units of the CSTO collective security system for 2025.

Promote the formation of the «space of security»

In practice the collective efforts in counteracting cross-border challenges and threats are made mainly within the scheduled operative and preventive measures. «Channel» operation is being implemented to discontinue drug distribution. With the purpose to assure information security and to prevent crime in the sphere of communication and information technology «PROXI» operation is being implemented by CSTO. The operation titled «Illegal alien» is targeted at counteracting illegal immigration. The legal framework for uniting the efforts in biological security sphere was prepared. Comprehensive anti-terrorist measures titled «Hired guns» is being successfully implemented with the purpose of closing the channels for recruiting and exporting the citizens of the CSTO member states in order to engage them in terrorist activities.

This March all of us grievously learned about the cynical terrorist attack against the civilians in Crocus City Hall near Moscow. All the CSTO member states strongly condemned the attack. The security forces responded immediately; the criminals were arrested during the first several hours after the attack. The security forces of Belarus actively assisted the Russian forces to prevent the terrorists leaving Russia after committing this unprecedented deadly attack. This audacious large-scale criminal act has set the task of developing relevant instruments of counteracting the terrorism threat across the entire area of the CSTO responsibility.

Now a few words about the situation with Armenia. During the preceding year our Armenian colleagues significantly decreased their level of participation in the CSTO events. Nevertheless, the main collaboration mechanisms are still functioning. Armenia remains the full-fledged member of the Organization, all the obligations with respect of this country are still in place in the full extent. We are counting on Armenian leaders to put clarity into the prospects of their future relations with CSTO. That would be to the benefit of all the members of our Organization, first of all – for planning our future joint activities.

I would like to conclude by saying that political and diplomatic format of interaction within the CSTO Parliament Assembly has passed its multi-year test and proved its soundness and efficiency. A closer coordination between the Secretariat and the Parliament Assembly may improve the CSTO capabilities in counteracting the above-mentioned threats and to promote the formation of the «space of security» in Eurasia. This will become the key performance indicator for our alliance and the evidence of the growing attractiveness for our partners.