As NATO gets stronger, Russia’s version of NATO is falling apart

Excerpt

Sweden joined NATO last month, ending two centuries of neutrality. Its accession comes just shy of NATO’s 75th anniversary. While Russian President Vladimir Putin hoped to fracture NATO and drive the United States from Europe, he has achieved the opposite. Not since the height of the Cold War has NATO been so united, and never before has it been so large. Sweden’s accession is only half the story, however.

For Putin, the problem is not only NATO’s gain but also the Collective Security Treaty Organization’s loss. Established in 2002, Putin saw the institutionalization of the CSTO as the antidote to NATO and a mechanism to assert Russian dominance over many former Soviet republics. The initial members were Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia and Tajikistan. Uzbekistan joined in 2006, but left six years later.

Now it may be Armenia’s turn to leave Russia’s orbit. Just two days after Hungarian ratification removed the last obstacle to Sweden’s NATO membership, Armenia signaled readiness to leave the CSTO. Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, who came to power in 2018 as a result of a people power revolution, suspended participation and described Armenia’s participation in the CSTO as “frozen.”

Ivana Stradner is a research fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.