Mikhail Krotov: The states which created the CSTO 20 years ago are consistently complying with the Agreement on the Establishment of the CIS

Signing of the Agreement on the Establishment of the Commonwealth of Independent States on December 8, 1991 and of the Almaty Declaration on December 21 completed the process of self-dissolution of the USSR.
According to Mikhail Krotov, Plenipotentiary Representative of the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation and deputy Executive Secretary of the CSTO PA, “the Belovezh Accords participants directly linked international recognition of their independence with a commitment to form the CIS, which would have preserved not only a common social and economic space, but also a common military and strategic space under a united command and with a coordinated foreign policy.”
Therefore, Mikhail Krotov thinks, one can say that “the states which created the Collective Security Treaty Organization 20 years ago are consistently complying with the Agreement on the Establishment of the CIS. And vice versa, the post-Soviet states, aspiring to join NATO, grossly violate the obligations they undertook when receiving international recognition of their sovereignty.”
Mikhail Krotov recalled that in its statement of November 2, 1996, the CIS Inter-Parliamentary Assembly condemned the NATO’s eastward expansion policy. “And all parliaments currently participating in the CSTO Parliamentary Assembly voted for this political position,” noted Plenipotentiary Representative of the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation to the CSTO PA.
Particularly because the CSTO sees the North Atlantic bloc’s movement onto the post-Soviet space as crossing a “red line.”