MOSCOW, January 1. /TASS/. Armenia will take the chairmanship reins of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), a post-Soviet security bloc, in 2022.
Yerevan was formally handed CSTO chairmanship from Tajikistan at the organization’s session in September 2021, and will pass the baton to Belarus in late 2022.
The member states – Russia, Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan – chair the organization in turn, according to alphabetical order.
The secretary-general is appointed for three years (regardless of the country’s chairmanship), while the Permanent Council is led by a representative of the state that holds the chairmanship in rotation. Armenia’s Permanent Representative to the CSTO Viktor Biyagov assumed this post, while the country’s Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan became the Chairman of the CSTO Collective Security Council.
This year, the CSTO will celebrate two anniversaries – the 30th anniversary of the Treaty on Collective Security and the 20th anniversary of the current organization’s formation. CSTO Secretary-General Stanislav Zas earlier said the key challenges were the escalating presence of NATO’s forces approaching the CSTO’s western borders as well as the complicated and unpredictable situation in Afghanistan. According to him, Afghanistan could see a wider armed standoff, stepped-up activity by terrorist organizations, a surge in drug trafficking and mounting uncontrolled migration.