MOSCOW, April 19. /TASS/. More than 10,000 troops have been trained in the Central African Republic (CAR) with help from Russian instructors, CAR President Faustin-Archange Touadera said.

"We decided that we should focus not only on military training and the like, but to cultivate a truly patriotic force that loves their country. And we are working with Russian instructors along these lines," he said in an interview with RTVI. "We continue training soldiers. Up to now, we have jointly trained more than 10,000 young troops, even much more. This is yielding results."

"Naturally, we do have some problems from the point of view of military infrastructure but we are working to correct this and will fix it."

According to Touadera, since becoming the president, his actions have been guided by the need "to modernize the army and take into account new challenges." "We initiated a lot of reforms in our defense and security forces. We reorganized the army as a garrison-type one with defense zones (military districts) so that our defense forces could defend the population right on the ground. We decided to bring them closer to people and send them to really remote areas which come under numerous attacks and are gripped by violence," he said. "We launched a training program, began to train not only the military but also the police, gendarmery and all other agencies that are to ensure our country’s security."