Valery Semerikov became Acting CSTO Secretary General on 1 Jan 2017
ArmInfo.CSTO Deputy Secretary General Valery Semerikov became the Acting CSTO Secretary General on 1 Jan 2017, according to the official statement posted on the CSTO's website.
The source says that upon expiry of CSTO Secretary General Nikolay Bordyuzha's term in office on 31 Dec 2016, CSTO Deputy Secretary General Valery Semerikov became the Acting Secretary General of the Organization on 1 Jan 2017.
To note, earlier it was decided to make the CSTO Secretary General's mandate rotating - once every three years in the alphabetical order. During the CSTO Collective Security Council's meeting in Yerevan on 14 Oct 2016, the participants were to name the Secretary General from Armenia. However, on October 14, Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan said that the issue of the CSTO Secretary General was removed from the agenda due to the absence of Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev. He added that the heads of the CSTO member states would consider that issue at a meeting in St. Petersburg in Dec 2016. However, this issue was not addressed in St. Petersburg either due to the absence of Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko.