Andrei Belousov Called for Strengthening the Collective Response to Threats Using CSTO and CIS Capabilities

On December 16, at a meeting of the military board with the participation of Vladimir Putin, President of Russia, Andrei Belousov, Russian Defence Minister, spoke about ten principal areas of the armed forces development for the next year and for medium-term perspective. In total, the Russian minister named 42 tasks facing the military department.

Military and military and technical cooperation was named as one of the priorities of international activities.

“International activity should be aimed at achieving the main goal – ensuring the security of Russia and its allies in the new multipolar world. This work should be focused on achieving strategic results in military and military and technical cooperation,” said Andrei Belousov.

The Minister added that in order to achieve this goal, it is necessary to solve a number of tasks, the first being to create efficient mechanisms of collective response to new security threats using the capabilities of the CSTO, CIS and the Union State.

He also specified that it is necessary to make bilateral forms of military cooperation long-term and sustainable. According to the head of the Russian Ministry of Defence, this involves long-term planning and implementation of joint exercises and patrols, solving air defence tasks, exchange of intelligence data and other practical formats.