OUBZ Exercises: The “Unbreakable Brotherhood” with Russia Is No More

The Collective Security Treaty Organisation (OUBZ) has been struggling for the last few years to maintain a lasting, impactful presence amongst its members. As Russia is the OUBZ security guarantor, this shift signals a larger political change exacerbated for Moscow by the military defeats in Ukraine.

Following Armenian Prime Minister Nikola Pashinyan’s refusal to hold the OUBZ exercise “Unbreakable Brotherhood-2023” on the country’s territory, Russian Foreign Ministry representative Maria Zakharova sharply criticised the Armenian leadership and de facto accused Yerevan of undermining the possibility of resolving the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan.

According to Zakharova, it was Yerevan’s refusal to hold a meeting of the foreign ministers of Azerbaijan, Armenia and Russia in Moscow last December that led to the escalation of the situation in the region.

The Writing on the Wall

Meanwhile, skirting around Moscow, the heads of the Armenian and Azerbaijani Foreign Ministries now have the opportunity to meet in other international forums; while these meetings have yet to produce any tangible results, the discussions are ongoing.

Nevertheless, Armenia did expect Russian peacekeeping forces to be active in the area of the Lachin corridor, the only road connecting Armenia to the disputed territory of Nagorno-Karabakh.

However, it turned out that not only did the Russian military refrain from deterring the Azerbaijani “activists” blocking this road, but also Vladimir Putin did not really want to bother Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, whose administration is linked to the “social activists”.

Therefore, the Prime Minister of Armenia cannot be denied this basic logic. If Russia, the leading OUBZ country, does not even want to incite possible problems with Azerbaijan, and the OUBZ exercises can be seen in both Baku and Ankara as a hidden threat to the security of Azerbaijan and Turkey, will Armenia not be left alone with its neighbours after the exercises are over?

The question now is not even whether Armenia wants to be an ally of Russia or not. The point is that Russia is no longer a security sponsor in the region, and military cooperation with it increases the sense of insecurity and uncertainty about the future.

Repeating Patterns

Last October, the leadership of another OUBZ state, Kyrgyzstan, followed more or less the same logic when it refused to hold the “Unbreakable Brotherhood-2022′ exercise on its territory. A month before these exercises, a border conflict broke out between Kyrgyzstan and neighbouring Tajikistan. The conflict was resolved, but Bishkek could not help but notice the indifference to what was shown by both Russian President Vladimir Putin and the OUBZ leadership.

At the start of the clashes, the presidents of Russia, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan were at the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit in Samarkand. It became clear that the OUBZ, whose troops quickly arrived in Kazakhstan last January to help quell the popular uprising, was not even remotely effective in helping to overcome the crisis between its members.

Thus, out of the six OUBZ countries, two countries have clearly distanced themselves from holding exercises on their territory – this is compounded by Armenia’s refusal to send its soldiers to the OUBZ exercises in Kazakhstan and to sign the final document of the OUBZ summit in Yerevan. And this is by no means the end of the story.

It is unlikely that in Tajikistan, for example, they would want to hold OUBZ exercises and see Kyrgyz troops on their territory. And in Kazakhstan, after the events of January 2022, the attitude to OUBZ is peculiar.

On the one hand, its troops helped the country’s current president Kassim-Zhomart Tokayev stay in power and defeat the clan of his predecessor Nursultan Nazarbayev. On the other hand, for a large part of Kazakh society, OUBZ has become synonymous with an assault on the country’s sovereignty – and an attack by Russian troops on Ukraine just weeks after the “operation” in Kazakhstan heightened fears.

President Tokayev himself began to behave much more cautiously towards Putin after this attack. The Kazakh president refused to recognise the “independence” of the Donbas “People’s Republics” during a public discussion with the Russian president at an economic forum in St Petersburg. And more recently, after Russia’s attacks on Ukraine’s critical infrastructure, the Kazakhstan embassy in Kyiv was one of the initiators of the establishment of “yurts of invincibility” – heating points in the form of a traditional Kazakh dwelling, and the first such yurt was opened in Bucza.

Lingering OUBZ Allies?

So who remains Russia’s unconditional ally in the OUBZ? One of them is Belarus, whose President Alyaksandr Lukashenka warned his colleagues of this at the organisation’s summit in Yerevan

“If Russia falls, our place will be under that rubble.”

However, the leaders of the other OUBZ countries are unlikely to agree with this statement by the Belarusian ruler. Putin’s attack on Ukraine has only heightened the fears of his neighbours and their desire to distance themselves from Russia. It could be said that he himself destroyed the remnants of the “unbreakable brotherhood”.

Even Russia’s closest allies in the Balkans are trying to distance themselves from Putin. Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić has said that he considers both Crimea and the Donbas to be an integral part of Ukraine. This can hardly be considered sensational: for the Serbian president, the non-recognition of Crimea and Donbas is primarily due to the non-recognition of Kosovo.

Far more interesting is that Vučić called on the Russians to stop recruiting Serbs for the war in Ukraine. Serbia – despite all its difficulties with the West – does not want to become another source of ‘cannon meat’ for Russia.

OUBZ’s waning influence is emblematic of how Russia’s attack on Ukraine is eroding its position not only in Europe but in the Caucuses and in Central Europe as well.

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About the author: Vitaly Portnikov,  is  an author and renowned journalist working in democratic media in Central and Eastern Europe for more than three decades.  

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