DUSHANBE, October 23. /TASS/. Member states of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) will hold joint counter-terror drills in Belarus next year, CIS Counter-Terror Center Head Yevgeny Sysoyev said at the 3rd CIS conference on countering terrorism and extremism on Thursday.

"In 2023, we successfully combined drills [of the competent agencies of CIS and SCO member states] in Kyrgyzstan. Last year, we combined counter-terror conferences in Tashkent and next year we will combine both conferences and drills in Minsk," he said.

The CIS counter-terror official also highlighted cooperation between the CIS and the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO).

"A new strong impetus to that was given on the sidelines of the SCO summit in September where a roadmap was signed for developing cooperation. In actual fact, this is far from being a formal act. This is a major political breakthrough that this document was adopted," he stressed.

As a result, the active phase of the CIS drills dubbed Cooperation-Counter-Terror 2025 in Tajikistan on October 24 will for the first time be held jointly with the final stage of the CSTO exercise Indestructible Brotherhood, the CIS counter-terror official said.