Armenia Ready for Military Solution to Border Issues: Independent Gazette

Armenia's Minister of Defense Arshak Karapetyan traveled to Moscow on August 10 at the invitation of his Russian counterpart Sergey Shoigu. This is the newly appointed minister's first foreign trip and, naturally, an important engagement with a strategic ally. The day before, he met in Yerevan with the Secretary General of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) Stanislav Zas, who arrived for a working visit to meet with the country’s top political and military leadership.

This was reported by the Independent Gazette, which provided an extensive overview of the tension at the Armenian-Azerbaijani border and CSTO's response to it. According to CSTO spokesman Vladimir Zaynetdinov, the organization’s Secretary General would inform the Armenian side about the situation in the responsibility sphere of the CSTO, as well as about the preparatory work for the next collective session.

Stanislav Zas has already met with Armenia's Minister of Defense Arshak Karapetyan, Foreign Minister Arman Grigoryan, and the Secretary of the Security Council Hayk Petrasyan. A meeting with Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan was scheduled for Tuesday.

Zas's visit to Armenia gained special attention because his appointment as CSTO Secretary General was accompanied by a scandal provoked by Yerevan. The publication reminded that this position is rotational and, after the current Secretary General's term ends, the representative of the next country in alphabetical order follows every three years. In July 2018, the Armenian representative, Secretary General Yuri Khachaturov, was arrested in Yerevan due to events connected to his previous work in the Armenian military structures.

At the same time, Armenia's revolutionary government believed it could replace Khachaturov, who was not yet finished with a three-year term, with another representative in the CSTO. However, this was not the case. Yerevan had to yield to pressures from Minsk and Nur-Sultan, and Belarusian representative Stanislav Zas became the Secretary General of the CSTO. The alliance's allies seem to have exhausted the conflict, yet the residue appears to remain.

Subsequent events have not contributed to improving the atmosphere—the 44-day war, further tensions at the borders, and Azerbaijani forces encroaching into Armenia’s depths. Yerevan never received the support that seemed inevitable from the CSTO as its member. Every time, the alliance found reasons to stay away from hot events in the South Caucasus. When the war continued, the CSTO explained its non-intervention by claiming that Azerbaijan itself was not threatening Armenia, and when problems arose at the Armenian-Azerbaijani borders and in Armenia's border areas, it stated that the alliance was not involved in border conflicts according to its charter.

Considering this, Defense Minister Arshak Karapetyan's statement regarding this level of meeting's