CSTO mission arrives in Armenia to monitor the situation

The Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) mission headed by the organization’s secretary general, Stanislav Zas, has arrived Thursday in Armenia to monitor the situation following the upsurge of hostilities on the border with Azerbaijan.

Once in Yerevan, the Armenian capital, the CSTO delegation met with Armenian Defense Minister Suren Papikyan, with whom it monitored the situation following “the large-scale aggression carried out by Azerbaijan,” the press service of the Russian military department announced and TASS reported.

“The operational group of the CSTO Joint Headquarters, headed by Chief of the General Staff, Colonel-General Anatoly Sidorov, has arrived in Armenia (…) to carry out a monitoring mission,” the missive wields.

The Armenian defense minister has expressed hope that the group will carry out “effective work and submit a detailed and accurate report” on the operational situation to the CSTO council, according to the aforementioned agency.

In the early hours of Thursday morning, Armenia and Azerbaijan signed a cease-fire agreement to end the crusade that began on Tuesday and has so far left 155 people dead.

Armenia and Azerbaijan were engaged in a confrontation in 2020 to take control of Nagorno-Karabakh, a territory with a majority Armenian population that has been the focus of conflict since it decided to secede in 1988 from the region of Azerbaijan integrated into the Soviet Union.

Hostilities between the two countries lasted for six weeks and left thousands dead. They finally ceased when the two countries reached a Russian-mediated cease-fire agreement allowing Russian peacekeepers to settle in Nagorno-Karabakh for a period of five years.