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CSTO exercises tested cooperation system of member-states’ armies

CSTO member-states held three major military drills this years — Rubezh (Frontier)-2014, Enduring Brotherhood-2014 and Interaction-2014
Interaction-2014 exercises TASS/Artiom Korotaev
Interaction-2014 exercises
© TASS/Artiom Korotaev

YEKATERINBURG, November 17. /TASS/. This year’s joint military drills of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) have improved the cooperation system between the member-states, the chiefs of CSTO General Staff confirmed on Monday.

“This year, we have implemented a whole complex of routine CSTO exercises: Rubezh (Frontier)-2014, Enduring Brotherhood-2014 and Interaction-2014. Summing up the results, the chiefs of General Staff of the member-states agreed that the exercises training has been significantly improved,” Russia’s first deputy defense minister and chief of General Staff Valery Gerasimov said. “The work in this direction will continue in 2015,” he said.

A deputy secretary-general of the security bloc Valery Semerikov said earlier on Monday serious faults had been found “in the cooperation between forces and means.”

The Rubezh-2014 exercises this July involved military forces from Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan, as well as the Joint Staff and the Secretariat of the CSTO. The drills tested the consistency of work of the multi-national forces under joint command.

In late July, the Enduring Brotherhood-2014, which was held at Kyrgyzstan’s Ala-Too firing range near the capital of Bishkek, involved military forces of all the CSTO member-states. Their goal was to jointly prepare and conduct operations to maintain peace by the CSTO collective peacekeeping forces in the Central Asian region.

The Interaction-2014 in August involved 3,000 personnel, including over 500 from Russia’s Airborne Troops, some 200 units of military and special equipment, and around 30 aircraft and helicopters. The Russian paratroopers were joined by military forces from Kazakhstan, Belarus, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan.