Mass media: Lukashenka can let down Russia at CSTO summit

Moscow's plans to strengthen the CSTO's military components and transform it into the Russian equivalent of NATO are threatened with collapse.

As the Russian newspaper “Kommersant” writes, at the informal CSTO summit which opens in Cholpon-Ata today, Russian president Dmitry Medvedev expected to receive Alyaksandr Lukashenka’s signature under the agreement on creation of the joint rapid reaction force, the Collective Operational Reaction Forces (CORF), and to sign documents on creation a military base of CORF in Kyrgyzstan. However, the newspaper reports that Minsk and Bishkek are not going to respond to persistent wishes of Moscow so far.

Before the summit Moscow, which wants to turn the CSTO into an analogue of the NATO, started to expedite the military construction in the framework of the organisation.

On Wednesday in Alma Ata staff talks started on holding the first ever CORF collective exercises. As the first deputy chief of the joint headquarters of the CSTO Oleg Latypov, the exercises are to take place from August 19 to October 24 in Kazakh training range Matybulak. More than 6,000 soldiers, armored vehicles and front-line aviation are to take place in the drills. Leaders of the countries members of the CSTO are to observe the active phase of the military exercises.

Moreover, Russia plans to set up a military base in Central Asia under the auspices of the CORF. The aide of the Russian president, Sergei Prikhodko, confirmed the reports about that which appeared in early July after the visit of the Vice Prime Minister of Russia Igor Sechin and Defense Minister Anatol Serdyukov to Bishkek.

However during preparation to the summit in Cholpon-Ata, serious obstacles appeared in the way of these plans. The main is the position of Alyaksandr Lukashenka, who hadn’t come to the CSTO summit in Moscow because of the “milk war” with Russia in June and hadn’t signed the agreement on the CORF. Minsk hadn’t accepted the post of the CSTO chair (Russia has taken upon itself technical chairmanship), and even announced decisions of the Moscow summit “illegitimate”, which puts at risk creation of the forces.

As the CSTO Secretary General Nikolay Bordyuzha admitted on Thursday, for full forming of the CORF the organisation should first solve the problems related to signing and ratification of the agreement on its creation.

There was a hope that this problem would be solved in the beginning if the week when Minsk announced that Alyaksandr Lukashenka plans to go to Cholpon-Ata.

However Minsk stated that Lukashenka’s arrival to the summit in Kyrgyzstan does not mean that he would definitely sign the documents adopted by all the members of the CSTO at the summit in Moscow. "As a sovereign and independent state, Belarus will decide itself what CSTO documents to sign and when,"said Valyantsin Rybakou, an aide to Lukashenka.

It is also emblematic that the Belarusian military men haven’t taken part in discussing the CORF drills in Alma-Ata, “Kommersant” writes.

An unofficial source of the newspaper in the Foreign Ministry of Belarus has stated that “it would be early to sign any documents in the CSTO framework before final solution of all problems in the bilateral relations with Russia”.