THE CHALLENGING QUARTER OF THE CENTURY

An anniversary summit of CIS heads of states was held in Bishkek on September 16-17. In 1991, the Commonwealth of Independent States was declared a platform for “a civilized divorce” of the former Soviet republics. Twenty-five years passing since that time is quite an age for a regional international organization. There have been many developments, including numerous armed conflicts, during this time. Currently, CIS is an umbrella uniting the countries such as Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Russia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan. Georgia seceded from the Commonwealth in 2009 after the known events. Ukraine is in limbo since 2014, when she stopped paying premiums and participating in the work of the Commonwealth, but did not leave the organization officially.

The heads of many states except Moldova (represented by Prime Minister), Turkmenistan (represented by Deputy Prime Minister), Uzbekistan (represented by Foreign Minister), and Ukraine (Ukraine's Ambassador to Kyrgyzstan) took part at the Bishkek Summit. One of the most important decisions of this meeting was a statement about the necessity of reforms within the Commonwealth to maximize its adaptation to modern realities. Thus, it is expected to reduce costs and improve operating mechanisms, to unload the agenda of summits and to delegate more powers to the Council of Foreign Ministers and the Economic Council, to pay particular attention to policy coordination on major transport and transit projects. As a result, the participants signed the document “On the adaptation of the Commonwealth to modern realities of integration processes”. Other important documents include: “Cooperation in the fight against terrorism in the next three years” and “Cooperation of countries in the fight against cybercrimes”.

Since then, the Commonwealth has been “buried” several times, but it is still alive, though it leaves a lot of open questions and doubts. Both the journalists and academicians have discussed the reasons for inefficiency and weaknesses of the CIS a lot. These include several major factors. First of all, this is the issue the Russian experts are not fond of, but which cannot be ignored for the sake of complete analysis. Russia has long claimed, and still does, absolute leadership of the Commonwealth, which is supported by its territorial, economic, scientific-technical, military capabilities, as well as the recent foreign policy ambitions, which are difficult to compare with the capabilities and ambitions of any other member-state. It is not surprising that the remaining CIS members has always seen the Commonwealth as the ghost of the USSR. Therefore, the participation in CIS eventually came down not to advantages of member-states but trivial opposition of Russia and the West. Secondly, from the very beginning of its existence, the Commonwealth had not have supranational powers, and therefore, effective mechanisms to overcome critical situations. Various contradictions and open conflicts (including those to which Russia was part of even more often) between some member-states had always hindered the integration process.

“I have already responded to a lie”

Thus, one of the most long-standing (older than the Commonwealth itself), most striking and most dangerous conflicts in the CIS is the Karabakh conflict. The Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan decided to address this topic at the recent summit in Bishkek since, in his own words, “the original protocol on cease-fire was signed in Bishkek” and “the CIS countries are, in some sense, the guarantor of the implementation of this termless agreement”. With regard to the events of April, the Armenian President said that it was Azerbaijan, which violated the ceasefire regime. Speaking about the political tools of settlement, Sargsyan has again moved away from the essence of the problem and talked about “the agreements on the cessation of military operations, the mechanism of investigation of incidents and expanding the powers of the Personal Representative of the OSCE Chairman”. In fact, Azerbaijan does not object to these elements, but it does not consider them central to a peaceful settlement of the conflict. Baku believes that there are much more important issues, namely the fact of occupation of the territory of a sovereign state, Azerbaijan, the destruction of infrastructure and, above all, historical, religious, and cultural monuments in the occupied territories, as well as other activities harmful to the environment of the region. A million of Azerbaijanis have been expelled from Nagorno-Karabakh and the seven surrounding districts as refugees and internally displaced persons. The Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev has reminded his colleagues about these issues and asked the Belarus President to violate, as an exception, the alphabetical order of speakers and to give him an opportunity to respond to the Armenian President. “Given that the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict is being solved under the auspices of other international institutions, I have found it unnecessary to discuss this subject today. But when I hear yet another complaint of the Armenian side, I believe it is my duty to comment on this. All international organizations are tired of listening to these complaints of the Armenian side”, said Aliyev. According to Aliyev, the main obstacle to negotiations is the fact that Armenia has been imitating participation for over 20 years and “in order to render this process termless, Armenia has periodically resorted to all sorts of provocation, one of which we witnessed in April of this year”. He has also reminded the four resolutions of UN Security Council adopted in the early 90s, which demand for unconditional and immediate withdrawal of Armenian occupation forces from the territory of Azerbaijan, but Armenia ignores them trying to create new realities. Serzh Sargsyan has responded to the comments of the Azerbaijani President with a remark: “It simply does not make sense to answer a lie”, to which Aliyev has replied: “I have already responded to a lie”.

There are other conflicts as well: Transnistrian, Georgian-Abkhazian and Georgian-Ossetian (which eventually led to seceding of Georgia from the CIS), and now the Ukrainian. The latter was a topic of discussions at the summit. During the discussions, Ambassadress Doroshenko has opposed against the Russian chairmanship, saying that Moscow “annexed part of the territory of Ukraine and contributes to the military conflict in the east of Ukraine”. Her second comment was about the 2020 Census. According to Doroshenko, Ukraine will take part in the census only if Russia does not take into account the population of Crimea. The Russian President Putin has responded: “Russia had not annexed Crimea, and everything that happened in Crimea is the result of illegal actions of certain political forces in Ukraine that had brought things to a coup d'etat”. Regarding the chairmanship in the CIS, Putin said that Ukraine has not signed and ratified the Charter of the Commonwealth and “therefore, can hardly pretend to make suggestions about the organization of its structure”. This skirmish between the opponents is not as important (at least because they have different ranks) as the fact showing the essence of contradictions between Kiev and Moscow, which both sides are trying to solve, so far unsuccessfully, in the “Norman” format.

Time for changes

It is not surprising that in 25 years everything that was supposed to keep under the “umbrella” of the CIS, had transformed into other structures such as the Union State (Russia and Belarus), CSTO (military), EEU (economy), SCO (military-political bloc, which goes beyond the region), and GUAM. It is impossible to compare these structures with each other but the degree of their success is a completely different story. If, however, one compares them with the CIS as a whole, the Commonwealth is definitely the leader as far as the number of unsold solutions are concerned. Therefore, it is difficult to make predictions about the successful start of the process of reformatting the CIS. Besides, it is probably not the appropriate time for such predictions, as many participants are more concerned about the changes at home.

Meanwhile, the parliamentary elections in Russia have not brought any surprises or changes in the political sense. United Russia, followed by Communist Party, Liberal Democratic Party, and Fair Russia won the majority of parliamentary mandates. Nevertheless, President Putin has initiated quite serious changes at the management level of the country. He is shaking up the top of the bureaucratic system including the Ministry of Interior, Foreign Intelligence Service (Sergey Naryshkin has recently replaced Mikhail Fradkov, who will lead the board of directors of the Russian Railways), and the State Duma (the First Deputy of the presidential administration Vyacheslav Volodin has been promoted to the post of the Speaker). There are new appointments in significant FSB structures, in the Army (new commanders of the Caspian Flotilla and the Baltic Fleet) as well. These changes also include the new children's ombudsman, the new Minister of Education and many new appointments at the lower level.

Meanwhile, a referendum on constitutional changes, which primarily involve the introduction of the new post of the First Vice-President and the extension of the presidential term from five to seven years, was held in Azerbaijan. According to changes, the head of state will be able to announce the early presidential elections in Azerbaijan. In case of early retirement, it is envisaged that the period required for waiting until presidential elections is reduced from three months to 60 days. Also, the updated Constitution will provide for dissolution of the parliament by the President and the right to participate in parliamentary elections starting from 18 years of age.

However, in many other member-states of the Commonwealth, the political changes are quite painful. Thus, Moldova has refused CIS chairmanship next year since the country was going through a serious internal crisis (both political and economic). Also, poor relations between Chisinau and Moscow are obvious. As Putin stated in Bishkek, considering “the dependent nature of Moldovan authorities, we can only hope for some kind of a working dialogue between Moscow and Chisinau in current circumstances”. But the consensus is not possible even in bilateral format since “Moldova has signed the known agreement with the European Union and therefore, it is necessary that the European Commission is part of the process”.

After the infamous events of July regarding the capture of the police station, Armenia is going through an extremely tense situation. President Sargsyan is busy with the renewal of the government. On September 13, he signed a decree on the appointment of the new Prime Minister Karen Karapetian, former Mayor of Yerevan, CEO of Gazprom’s subsidiary ArmRosGazprom and the First Vice-President of Gazprombank in Moscow. According to Armenian media sources, Karapetyan has demonstrated some brisk movements already: he has replaced almost the entire economic bloc of the government, which, incidentally, included a few so-called oligarchs. He is also advocating the need to reduce gas and power tariffs, as well as the establishment of a genuine government of national unity. The same Armenian experts are skeptic about the reforms, however, claiming that the real changes will never happen since Karapetyan is clearly not a diehard reformer and is an openly pro-Russian politician. It is more likely that Sargsyan just intends to keep his position until 2018, when the country goes to a parliamentary form of government, and he will have a chance to lead the cabinet.

Uzbekistan is also waiting for the presidential elections. The country has recently witnessed a sudden change of power, which coincided with the tough economic period. The neighboring Kyrgyzstan is on the verge of changes as well. It is noteworthy that almost immediately after the summit in Bishkek, President Almazbek Atambayev, who has ruled since 2011, took a short vacation because of heart problems and canceled his trip to the 71th session of the UN General Assembly. All these events are taking place just before the proposed changes to the constitution. Atambayev claims that the office of the Prime Minister and the Parliament need to have more powers, but his opponents, including the former interim president Roza Otunbayeva, are confident that the Kyrgyz leader wants to extend his stay in power as prime minister. By the way, in mid-September, the Turkmen President Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov signed a law according to which the country has a new edition of the Constitution, increasing the term of office of the President up to seven years, and abolishing the age limit for presidential nominees.

No alternatives are available yet

It is obvious that the situation with the readiness of member-states to integration processes within the Commonwealth will be clear only when the political situation in these countries is more or less stable. In fact, there is a requirement for integration, particularly in the field of transport communications and transit, migration policy, the fight against terrorism and crime. One of the reasons calling for changes is the fact that the above-mentioned international organizations such as EAEC, CSTO, SCO, etc. do not unite all the “divorced” states combined under the CIS umbrella. So, the Commonwealth area is the only playground for now, particularly in terms of the number of participants. We should also mention that CIS is also an important playground in terms of cultural and humanitarian cooperation. Ilham Aliyev has particularly mentioned this in Bishkek, highlighting the active role of Azerbaijan in strengthening cooperation in this field, without which “we would not probably enjoy the level of trust and understanding that exists today”. By the way, the ancient Azerbaijani city of Ganja was awarded the status of the cultural capital of the Commonwealth in 2017.