Military and political alliances are created not only for the coordination of external, but also of internal issues, for smooth and peaceful living within the bloc. Seyran Ohanyan, leader of the opposition "Armenia" Faction in the National Assembly (NA) and former defense minister of Armenia, told this to reporters at the NA Monday.
He made a comparison between NATO and CSTO, noting: "NATO has more than 70 years of history and there are even problems within NATO. The same applies to the CSTO; but the CSTO has a history of 30 years, whereas in terms of operations—a history of 20 years, and within this organization as well there are problems that need to be solved. It is not that we, as the opposition, like everything in CSTO. There are decision-making procedures that can be done more quickly."
According to Ohanyan, they considered that CSTO is for global problems in this region, it should not deal with, for example, relations with Azerbaijan, border situation, creation of border defense, engineering equipment, and trenching.
"The CSTO should not deal with all this; it should be dealt with by the military and political leadership of Armenia, which it did not implement. On the one hand, we say to the whole world: ‘well, these are heights that are not needed (…),’ on the other hand, we say: ‘let's get the Azerbaijanis out of our territories.’ It is clear that we should ask, carry out work in the political direction. But for me, as a military officer, a question arises: what have you done to implement the protection of your borders in a new format already? In this regard, although the cooperation with the CSTO is multilateral, but as the presence of the Russia is predominant according to directions, we use that platform for the deeper development of Armenian-Russian relations.
I still believe that the Armenian soldiers, the Armenian commanders, who have shown that they fought heroically where they had the support of the people and the authorities, should stand at the border of Armenia. Neither the EU monitoring team nor the soldiers of any CSTO country will come to dig trenches for us. You have to be completely ignorant not to realize that you have to protect your borders yourself," Ohanyan emphasized.
