On January 1, 2020, Belarus Security Council Head Stanislau Zas will start acting as a new Secretary General of the Collective Security Treaty Organization. The decision has been taken at the CSTO summit that is now taking place in Bishkek, interfax.by reports.
Stanislau Zas was born in Ukraine, he graduated from the Baku Higher All-Arms Command School, the Military Academy of Belarus and the Military Academy of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Russia.
“Today presidents, heads of states, have congratulated Stanislau Vasilyevich Zas, a representative of the Republic of Belarus, on his appointment to this position,” Acting Secretary General Valery Semerikov said.
In accordance with the previous decision of the leaders of CSTO member states, since 2015, the appointment of the CSTO Secretary General has been rotational.
“Armenia has already been presented; now, from 1 January 2020 on, it will be the turn of the Republic of Belarus,” Semerikov stressed.
In 2018, Armenia recalled its representative Yuri Khachaturov, who became the CSTO Secretary General in April 2017, in connection with a criminal case on the bloody crackdown on an opposition demonstration in 2008.
Following the results of the session of the Collective Security Council of the CSTO, the former president of Kazakhstan Nursultan Nazarbayev stated that the representative of Belarus should be elected as the next Secretary General after Armenia. The information was later confirmed by Alyaksandr Lukashenka. Yerevan, however, insisted that the post of the CSTO Secretary General should be filled by a representative of Armenia until 2020.
As a result, from November, 2018 to January, 2020 Russia’s representative Valery Semerikov, who earlier worked as Deputy Secretary General, is in charge of the organization
The CSTO includes Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia and Tajikistan.
