Russia plans to give the UN peacekeeper status to the CSTO-controlled forces so that it could use them in favor of the Kremlin. Thus, Moscow wants to get a green light to send its military contingent and units of controlled countries worldwide and deploy them in areas of geopolitical interest under the UN flag.
To achieve this goal on February 16, as chairman of the UN Security Council (SC), Russia intends to debate on the UN and the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) interaction. At present, the CSTO Collective Peacekeeping Forces number about 3,600 people.
In 2018, the CSTO participated in ‘Unbreakable Brotherhood 2018’ joint military trainings to work out the scenario of the peacekeepers’ deployment operation in a non-CSTO state-member that the CSTO forces had conducted in the Central Asian region on a fictional UN Security Council Resolution.
Such plans raise some concerns about abuses demonstrated during the CSTO operation in Kazakhstan where the organization military personnel used UN symbols illegally.
The CSTO forces integration into the UN peacekeeping structures will discredit the UN activities, and ultimately turn into Russia’s foreign policy tool as well.
Russia uses peacekeeping missions to establish control over certain territories, part of the area of geopolitical interest. For example, the Russian contingent deployment in Transnistria is based on an agreement that de jure excludes the withdrawal possibility at the initiative of Moldova. In fact, the contingent has become an instrument of Russia’s military presence in the region, thereby giving Moscow a free hand to influence the security of Moldova and Ukraine, as well as block Chisinau’s EU-NATO integration initiatives.
Moscow believes that the fact of the CSTO peacekeepers’ participation in UN missions in the Middle East can attach weight to the Kremlin-controlled organization.
In December 2021, Russia considered the possibility of deploying CSTO units as part of the UN UNIFIL mission in Lebanon.
In case of the CSTO integration into the UN peacekeeping contingent, there is a high probability to use armed forces of Russia, Belarus and Armenia in operations on the territory of Ukraine on Moscow’s request. Such a scenario is more than probable.
As Vladimir Zainetdinov, the CSTO press secretary, stated in December 2021, Russia is actively working on the CSTO peacekeeping potential integration into UN peacekeeping activities. According to Valery Gerasimov, the author of the hybrid war concept and the head of the Russian General Staff, they drafted an action plan to get the CSTO peacekeeping potential involved in UN peacekeeping activities; it also included trainings of military observers and staff officers to participate in peacekeeping operations.
Moscow seeks to transform the CSTO into a military alliance with the Kremlin as an exclusive decision maker. Upon receiving a UN mandate, Moscow plans to use the CSTO to conduct operations similar to the ones in DeliberateForce, Skymonitor in Yugoslavia in the 1990s, and thus demonstrate the coalition of forces as an alternative to NATO. The Kremlin believes that it will allow Russia both conduct operations worldwide upon the request of foreign governments, and to protect Moscow-friendly authoritarian regimes confronting the democratic West.
