Putin is confused. The CSTO club is getting narrower

Uzbekistan has officially suspended its membership in the Collective Security Treaty Organization. President of Belarus Alexander Lukashenka announced this yesterday at the broadened session of the CSTO Council on Collective Security in Moscow. “We have complied with their request and suspended Uzbekistan’s membership in the CSTO,” RIA Novosti quoted Lukashenka as saying. The Belarusian leader also underlined that the CSTO member states have made an agreement that “no more easing will be made for the countries who want to enter the organization, including Uzbekistan.”

It will be reminded that in late June 2012 Uzbekistan sent a note to the CSTO Secretariat that it wanted to quit this organization. Uzbekistan has already undertaken a similar step. In 1999 Tashkent refused to prolong the agreement. Nonetheless in August 2006 the country reestablished its membership in the CSTO after there was a cooling in its relations with the West: Uzbekistan was strongly criticized for the cruel dispersion the crowd during the disorders in Andizhan in 2005. Earlier Moscow stated that it regrets that Uzbekistan has suspended its membership in the CSTO, but called Uzbekistan Russia’s ally. “This is Uzbekistan’s sovereign choice. We regret that such a decision has been made, but it has been made. And the address has been sent to the heads of the CSTO member states,” RF Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergei Lavrov told journalists.