Military exercises of CSTO CRRF to be held in Belarus

The Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) will hold military exercises on using the Collective Rapid Response Forces (CRRF) from August 26 till October 19. Troops will arrive in Belarus in September.

“the military exercises represents complex of joint strategic and command post exercises holding in the common strategic and military-political situation covering all regions of the CSTO collective security,” Interfax learnt from the organization’s joint staff.

The source said the exercises would have three stages to be held in Russia, Belarus, and Kazakhstan.

The objective of the exercises is “using joint forces to prevent, and, if necessary, liquidate a military threat to the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the CSTO member-states”.

It was reported earlier about delay of the CRRF exercises in Kazakhstan which were to start on August 19. What to the opinions on the Internet that it was Minsk that had broken the exercises having refused to sign the agerreme4nt on the CRRF, Vitaly Strugovets, the head of the press service of the Secretariat of the organization, told BelaPAN that the position of Minsk on creating the Collective Rapid Response Forces within the frames of the Collective Security Treaty Organization wasn’t the reason for the exercises delay.

We remind that s the Agreement on CRRF creation was signed on June 14 in Moscow at the session of the Collective Security Council by five state leaders. The Belarusian delegation refused to take part in the summit due to the “milk war5” with Russia. The president of Uzbekistan didn’t sign the agreement as well.

After an informal CSTO summit in Kyrgyzstan on July 31, Secretary General of the organization Nikolay Bordyuzha said: “The Belarusian party is ready to sign this agreement. Moreover, it approved the draft agreement at a session of the security council secretaries in Minsk. Besides, the Belarusian party made proposals on the CRRF. I think non-signing of the document by Belarus is only a technical problem that will be solved in the nearest time.”

As Vitaly Strugovets explained, it was planned to hold exercises in the middle of the previous year. A number of important political decisions, including the CRRF creation, were made within the frames of the organization.

The exercises are supposed to be carried out in Kazakhstan in the middle of October. They will be come the last stage of the joint military exercises of the CSTO member-states.

The first stage, command team exercises, will be held in Moscow on August 26. The second stage will take place in Belarus.

Belarus hasn’t joined the Agreement of the CRRF creation yet, and these military forces can’t be considered the CSTO forces.

On August 21, Alyaksandr Lukashenka flew to Sochi for a meeting with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev. Signing the Agreement on the CSTO CRRF creation may become of the themes at the negotiations.

Independent experts say the CRRF is created to suppress rallies of democratic opposition in the member-states of the Collective Security Treaty Organization.