After disdaining the G20, the Russian president participated in the top of the Organization of the Collective Security Treaty (OTSC) in Armenia. A short visit which will have above all recalled the weakness of Russia even in its “nearby foreigner”.
by Benoît Vitkine (Moscow, correspondent) and Faustine Vincent
erevan rather than Bali. After having disdained the summit of the organized G20, mid-November, in Indonesia, because he believed that his personal security would not be guaranteed, or for fear of a confrontation with his counterparts, Vladimir Putin hoped to give himself ‘Air on a more familiar ground. Welcomed on Wednesday, November 23, in the Armenian capital, the Russian president intended to deny once again the relative isolation which is his on the international scene and tighten links with his allies and neighbors.
las, this short visit will have above all recalled the weakness of Russia even in its “close stranger”, according to the formula in use in Moscow, and the decrepitude of the regional alliance it directs. The meeting at the top of the Organization of the Collective Security Treaty (OTSC) – Alliance which includes, in addition to Russia and Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tadjikistan – will have seen the chief of the Kremlin criticized all parts. Sign of a tension impossible to hide, the final document of the summit was not adopted, due to the blocking of Armenia which considers itself abandoned against its neighbor Azerbaijani.
On the central file of Ukraine, eluded by Mr. Putin in his introductory remarks, the president of Kazakhstan, Kassym-Jomart Tokaïev, recalled the position shared by almost all of the neighbors of Russia: “He It is time to seek together a peace solution. (…) We cannot accept that the Russian and Ukrainian brothers are separated for decades or centuries by mutual grievances. “
” serious internal tremors “
Believing to come to the rescue of his ally, the Belarusian leader, Alexandre Loukachenko, warned: “If Russia prevails, Otsc viv. If, God preserves us, she does not win, OTSC will stop existing. (…) If Russia collapses, our place to everyone is under the rubble. “
This clumsy outing, which contradicts the myth of the “special operation”, is nonetheless revealing: the very existence of the military alliance, formed in 1994, which brings together these six states of the old USSR, is today in question and, with it, one of the Kremlin’s levers of influence in what he considers his pre -square. “The alliance is at a moment of truth, comments Arkadi Doubnov, Russian specialist in post -Soviet space. She knows serious internal tremors, and some of her members are frustrated and unhappy, to the point of wondering what still justifies her existence. “
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