Ukrainian Parliament sets Sights on NATO: CSTO Counters | nsnbc international - 0 views
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The Ukrainian Parliament, on Tuesday, December 23, voted for abandoning Ukraine’s neutral status and set the country on course for a NATO membership. The CSTO countered by integrating its constituent armed forces with the Russian Command and Control Center. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov described Kiev’s decision as counterproductive while Belarus President Lukashenko asserted his country’s commitment to the collective defense within the CSTO and within the framework of the Eurasian Economic Union.
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Lavrov noted that the decision escalates confrontations and creates the illusion that the profound internal crisis in Ukraine can be resolved through the adoption of such laws. Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev noted on his Facebook page that Ukraine’s no-aligned status was “in essence an application to enter NATO, turning Ukraine into a potential military opponent of Russia”. Russia’s Ambassador to the OSCE, Andrei Kelin commented on Kiev’s decision, describing it as unfriendly, and as adding trouble and tension to the Russian-Ukrainian relationship.
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It is noteworthy that former French Foreign Minister Roland Dumas, who participated in the negotiations about Germany’s reunification, repeatedly stressed that the understanding that NATO wouldn’t station weapons or troops in any of the former Warsaw Pact member States or expand eastwards was “the essence of peace”. In an interview with l’Humanité.fr in September, Dumas said: “This was the essence of peace. Everyone was in agreement… Well, the Americans do not heed. They transported weapons to the Baltic countries and Poland. Hence the controversy when Putin came to power”.
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Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko asserted that the CSTO has been created and operates to protect the interests of all of its member states, reports the Belarus news agency BelTa. The news agency quotes Lukashenko added: “As the common economic space grows larger and more advanced within the framework of the Eurasian Economic Union, which members are now virtually identical to those of the CSTO, the importance of protecting economic interests will be pushed to the forefront. .. The existing mechanism of interaction between the special services and other services can be used for that. The services are capable of putting a stop to organized criminal groups, which are now trying to find loopholes and exploit the new economic conditions for their criminal gains.”
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The members of the post-Soviet Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) countered the push for a NATO expansion to Ukraine by incorporating their national military forces into the National Defense Control Center of Russia. The announcement about the move was made by Putin, during the opening of the CSTO session in Moscow on December 23, that was held parallel to a final meeting before the formal establishment of the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU) on January 1, 2015.
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Moscow repeatedly warned against NATO’s eastwards expansion. Earlier this year Russian President Putin noted that one of the important reasons behind Moscow’s acceptance of the Crimean referendum and Crimea’s accession into the Russian Federation was the prospect of the deployment of NATO forces, especially naval forces to Crimea. Putin commented that Russia was more comfortable with Russia’s Western “Partners for peace” visiting a Russian naval base in Crimea than the other way around.
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Among the primary initiatives following the CSTO’s counter-moves to NATO’s eastward expansion in Ukraine is the integration of CSTO member states’ Air Forces, a highly sophisticated electronic command and control center, and thus far, the delivery of new Russian-built, state of the art jets to Belarus.