MOSCOW, June 18. /TASS/. Up to 3,000 citizens from the member-states of the Collective Security Treaty Organization, a post-Soviet security bloc, now undergo combat training of the Islamic State terrorist group in Syria, the organization’s chief said on Thursday.
"This is very conditional statistics. We know approximately how many citizens undergo combat training on the territory of Syria, that’s several thousand," Nikolay Bordyuzha told reporters.
"But we understand that these 2,000 or 3,000 are a great force," he stressed.
The Islamic State has recruited almost 400 people from the Central Asian republic of Kyrgyzstan and around 2,000 people of the Russian descent.
The citizens of the CSTO countries and European states are recruited by the IS through social networks, Bordyuzha said, stressing that the current international effort to fight against terrorism is not enough.
"There has been a lack of real cooperation in the sphere of anti-terrorism fight over the past several years," the CSTO chief said. This comes as "major players have turned their attention to the situation in Ukraine."
The Collective Security Treaty Organization comprises Russia, Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan.