Moscow summit tests Russia’s grip on former Soviet allies | Political news

Strained relations between the Kremlin and Armenia will be in the spotlight at a security summit in Moscow.

President Vladimir Putin will chair a session of the Collective Security Council of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), the post-Soviet military bloc dominated by Russia, on Wednesday.

But since February 2024, Armenia’s participation in the bloc has been frozen.

Although membership technically exists, Armenia does not participate in the bloc’s activities, having effectively boycotted it after losing the war against Azerbaijan. Yerevan criticized the group for failing to offer meaningful support during the conflict.

Armenia “does not de facto participate in CSTO operations,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said last week. “What happens next will depend on the nature of the discussions within the organization.”

Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan declared on November 5 that “our interest in the CSTO has reached its end.”

In the 2020 war with Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh, a region once dominated by ethnic Armenians, the CSTO failed to live up to its core principle.

Neither Russia nor the other member states – Belarus and three Central Asian countries of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan – have deployed troops to help Armenia, although the CSTO charter envisages such assistance.

Moscow also has two military bases in Armenia with thousands of military personnel and border guards.

Azerbaijan, which withdrew from the CSTO in 1999, has used new weapons purchased from Russia for billions of dollars.

Baku’s military triumph also relied on Turkish and Israeli-made drones and a revised war manual that reflected recent advances in warfare and military technology.

Pashinyan’s anti-Kremlin stance has been a thorn in Moscow’s side since he came to power in 2018 following massive protests against Russia-backed Armenian leaders. Yerevan is also seeking to join the European Union.

Armenia’s “useful timing”

Moves to strip Armenia of its voting rights in the CSTO amount to “demonstrative flogging,” Galiya Ibragimova, a Moldova-based Central Asia expert, told Al Jazeera.

“Considering that other CSTO countries are more economically dependent on Russia or stick to the logic of ‘don’t prick the tiger,’ they will remain silent or watch how a bad student is whipped in class,” she said.

The political challenge that Armenia – a nation of 3 million facing the arrival of more than 100,000 people from Nagorno-Karabakh – has posed to Moscow reflects a paradigm shift in the former Soviet Union.

“Yerevan’s timing in taking these steps is very helpful, as Russia is too busy with its war in Ukraine and is to a large extent weakened by (Western) sanctions and Ukrainian military strikes against Russian economic infrastructure, as well as a looming recession,” Alisher Ilkhamov, head of the London-based think tank Central Asia Due Diligence, told Al Jazeera.

Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 became another pivotal moment that appeared to show how ineffective the CSTO was, with none of the member states supporting Moscow militarily.

Shortly before the start of the war in Ukraine, the CSTO flexed its muscles in January 2022, when Russia sent thousands of peacekeepers to several Kazakh cities following massive street protests.

But Moscow’s reported failures in the Ukraine war have turned Russia’s political and military power “into a myth that even Russian officials and military personnel believe in – let alone CSTO member states”, Ibragimova believes.

She said that the Russian weapons that CSTO member states can obtain are sold as both “discounted” and “advanced”, but in reality “these are very old weapons that Russia did not need.”

Meanwhile, the ex-Soviet countries of Central Asia and the South Caucasus are discovering new formats of military interaction.

One of them is the Turkish-led Organization of Turkic States, which includes Azerbaijan and three Central Asian countries.

In late September, thousands of elite military personnel from Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan and Turkey trained in Nagorno-Karabakh and the Caspian coast to seize ships, land paratroopers and use drones to attack and deliver munitions.

They are also trying regional cooperation.

In October 2025, Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan held joint exercises.

Moscow also failed to convince Uzbekistan, Central Asia’s economic powerhouse with a population of 37 million, to join the CSTO.

Uzbekistan left the bloc in 1999, rejoined in 2006 and suspended its membership in 2012, preferring the role of “observer state”.

“And even if Moscow expresses its dissatisfaction with signs of disloyalty on the part of Eurasian countries like Azerbaijan and Uzbekistan, so far it is limited only to verbally expressing its dissatisfaction,” Ilkhamov said.

“In the near future, Moscow (will) be unable to take decisive action to curb the somewhat disloyal nations in the region.”

Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoyev is trying to “compensate for his steps toward the West with a show of loyalty to Moscow,” Ilkhamov said.

Mirziyoyev attended the most important date in Moscow’s political calendar – the annual May 9 “Victory Parade,” which commemorates the Soviet Union’s decisive role in the defeat of Nazi Germany.

It also sends Uzbek troops to participate in joint exercises with Russia – but also hosts Western dignitaries like US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who visited Uzbekistan in mid-October.

“Even though Russian officials suggested to Uzbekistan that it would be good to return, that was never the case,” Ibragimova said.

The only “real” item on the Moscow summit’s agenda is the security situation in Afghanistan, which borders Central Asia, Ruslan Suleymanov, a research associate at the New Eurasian Strategies Centre, a US-British think tank, told Al Jazeera.

Russian officials have warned this year that up to 23,000 fighters from more than 20 armed groups are operating in Afghanistan.

ISIL in Khorasan Province (ISKP), which operates in several Afghan provinces, is particularly dangerous.

The group is “actively recruiting young people from Central Asia, especially from Tajikistan,” Suleymanov said.

The group’s operations extend well beyond Afghanistan: It claimed responsibility for the 2024 attack on a Moscow concert hall that killed more than 140 people, including five children, and injured more than 550.

This year, CSTO states have increased security on the 1,344-kilometer (835-mile) Afghan-Tajik border.

“That is why Russia and Central Asian countries take what is happening in Afghanistan seriously,” Suleymanov said.