Stanisław Zaś

Zas with John Bolton (far right), Paweł Soloch (center right), and Oleksandr Danylyuk (center left) in Warsaw.

Lieutenant General Stanislav Vasilievich Zas (, ; born 1964) is a Belarusian general and politician who is a former Secretary-General of the Collective Security Treaty Organization and was formerly the State Secretary of the Security Council of Belarus.

Early life Zas was born in 1964 in Chernihiv, Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. From 1982–1985, Zas was enrolled in the Baku Higher Combined Arms Command School in the capital of the Azerbaijan SSR.

Career After graduating from the Azerbaijani command school at the age of 21, he began his service in the Soviet Army, at one point acting as a commander of a motorized rifle platoon and reconnaissance platoon. For two years beginning in 1993, he was selected to study at the Combined Arms Academy of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, and completed his studies at age 32 in 1996 at the Military Academy of Belarus with honors and a gold medal. Zas quickly rose in the military hierarchy, serving in various positions such as head of the Main Operational Department of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Belarus. Zas was promoted to Deputy State Secretary in August 2008. On 4 November 2015 he replaced Alexander Mezhuyev as State Secretary of the Security Council of Belarus, in accordance with a decree by President Alexander Lukashenko dating back to July of that year.

Secretary-General of CSTO In December 2018 Lieutenant-General Zas was made a candidate for the post of Secretary General of the Collective Security Treaty Organization, succeeding Colonel-General Yuri Khachaturov from Armenia.

In May 2019, the CSTO's Foreign Ministers nominated Zas to become Secretary General, with his official appointment being on 1 January 2020.

It was under his watch that the CSTO deployed active duty troops for the first time in its 20-year history in January 2022, to quell an incipient rebellion in Kazakhstan.

Zas reaffirmed the CSTO goal of "resolution of world problems by exclusively political and diplomatic means in accordance with the provisions and goals of the UN Charter" as recently as 16 February in communication with the UN Security Council.