Moscow CSTO Summit Tests Russia's Waning Grip as Armenia Pulls Back and Allies Hedge

On Wednesday, Vladimir Putin will chair a session of the Collective Security Council of the Collective Security Treaty Organization in Moscow. The CSTO is the Russia-led post-Soviet military bloc, and one of its members will be conspicuously absent in spirit if not on paper. Armenia's participation has been frozen since February 2024. The membership technically exists, but Yerevan takes no part in the bloc's activities.

The reason goes back to the 2020 war with Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh, a region once dominated by ethnic Armenians. The CSTO's charter envisages aid for a member in such a conflict, yet neither Russia nor Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan or Tajikistan sent troops. Armenia lost the war and blamed the group for offering no meaningful support. This is despite Moscow maintaining two military bases in Armenia, with thousands of servicemen and border guards. Azerbaijan, which left the CSTO in 1999, fought with new weaponry bought from Russia for billions of dollars, along with Turkish and Israeli-made drones and a revised war playbook.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said last week that Armenia "de facto" does not take part in the CSTO's operations, and that what happens next will depend on the nature of the discussions inside the organisation. Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said on November 5 that Armenia's interest in the CSTO "has run its course." Pashinyan has been a thorn in Moscow's side since he came to power in 2018 after mass protests against Russia-backed Armenian leaders, and Yerevan is also seeking European Union membership. Moves to strip Armenia of its voting rights amount to "a demonstrative whipping," Galiya Ibragimova, a Moldova-based Central Asia expert, told Al Jazeera. She expects the other members, more economically dependent on Russia or guided by a "don't poke the tiger" logic, to stay quiet.

Analysts see Armenia's timing as deliberate. Alisher Ilkhamov, head of the London-based Central Asia Due Diligence think tank, said Yerevan is acting while Russia is occupied by the war in Ukraine and weakened by Western sanctions, Ukrainian strikes on its economic infrastructure and a looming recession. Armenia is a country of 3 million still absorbing more than 100,000 people who arrived from Nagorno-Karabakh.

The invasion of Ukraine in 2022 deepened doubts about the bloc, since no member backed Moscow militarily. Only weeks earlier, in January 2022, the CSTO had shown its reach when Russia sent thousands of peacekeepers to Kazakh cities after mass street protests. Ibragimova argues that Russia's reported failures in Ukraine have turned its might into a myth that even its own officials and military believe in. She also says the weapons Russia sells to members as discounted and advanced are in reality very old arms Moscow did not need.

Meanwhile, former Soviet states in Central Asia and the South Caucasus are finding other formats. One is the Turkiye-led Organization of Turkic States, which includes Azerbaijan and three Central Asian nations. In late September, thousands of elite servicemen from Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan and Turkiye trained in Nagorno-Karabakh and on the Caspian shore, practising ship seizures, paratrooper landings and drone attacks and resupply. In October 2025, Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan held joint drills.

Uzbekistan, Central Asia's economic powerhouse with 37 million people, remains out of reach. It left the bloc in 1999, rejoined in 2006 and suspended its membership in 2012, preferring to be an observer. Ilkhamov says Moscow has so far limited itself to verbal dissatisfaction with Azerbaijan and Uzbekistan and cannot take decisive steps soon. He says President Shavkat Mirziyoyev offsets his moves toward the West with shows of loyalty to Moscow: he has attended the May 9 Victory Parade and sends troops to joint drills with Russia, while also hosting US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who visited in mid-October.

The one "real" item on the agenda, according to Ruslan Suleymanov of the New Eurasian Strategies Centre, is Afghanistan. Russian officials warned this year that up to 23,000 fighters from more than 20 armed groups operate there. Islamic State in Khorasan Province, which recruits young people from Central Asia, especially Tajikistan, claimed the 2024 Moscow concert hall attack that killed more than 140 people and wounded more than 550. This year CSTO states strengthened security along the 1,344km Afghan-Tajik border. Watch whether the summit moves against Armenia's voting rights, and whether Afghanistan produces coordinated action.