Working meetings of heads of medical services of CSTO Member States’ defence departments will be held on a regular basis

The initiative to hold regular working meetings of heads of CSTO Member States’ defence departments was given the green light. According to the website of the Joint Staff of the Collective Security Treaty Organization, at the 17th meeting of the Military Committee, the members of the CSTO Military Committee, having heard the report of Colonel General Anatoly Sidorov, Head of the CSTO Joint Staff, supported the proposal to hold annual working meetings of heads of medical services of CSTO Member States’ defence departments to jointly address matters of medical support and joint action in response to threats to epidemiological safety.
“The defence agencies of the CSTO Member States are carrying out a number of activities to continuously monitor the sanitary and epidemiological situation in the course of their day-to-day activities and during combat training, which includes joint training of the CSTO Troops (Collective Forces). In these conditions, it is necessary to further develop medical support system for joint training and CSTO Troops (Collective Forces),” said Colonel General Anatoly Sidorov.
On November 19, the 17th meeting of the Military Committee for the Development of Military Cooperation of the Collective Security Treaty Organization Member States was held remotely.
Colonel General Anatoly Sidorov, Head of the CSTO Joint Staff, briefed the members of the Military Committee about the main results of CSTO Member States’ military cooperation and its mid-term development directions.
Representatives of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Republic of Armenia, the Republic of Belarus and the Kyrgyz Republic made presentations.
Speaking about joint training in 2020, Anatoly Sidorov noted: “Strategic command and staff training on the basis of the CSTO Crisis Response Centre; special exercise of the logistics function Echelon 2020; command and staff training with the CSTO CRRF Command held in the Russian Federation; command and staff training Unbreakable Brotherhood 2020, co-held with the CSTO Peacekeeping Force in the Republic of Belarus, have been well-prepared and conducted.
The Head of the CSTO Joint Staff stressed that “No issues were identified either in the preparation methodology of joint activities, or in the actions of the command and troops during their joint operational and combat training. The main problem this year is the ability of training participants to travel due to coronavirus-related limitations and the need to take preventive measures to avoid its spread in the areas of the exercises.”
“The CSTO Joint Staff has worked out a possible scenario of joint exercises in case the epidemiological situation remains unchanged next year,” said the Head of the CSTO Joint Staff.
The participants of the meeting were briefed about working meetings of representatives of medical services of defence departments of the CSTO Member States.
Chiefs of the general staffs of the Armed Forces of the Republic of Belarus and the Republic of Tajikistan, first deputy Chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Kyrgyz Republic, Chief of the Joint CSTO Staff, first deputy chiefs of the general staffs of the Armed Forces of the Republic of Armenia and the Republic of Kazakhstan took part in the meeting, presided by Army General Valery Gerasimov, Chairman of the Military Committee, Head of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, first deputy Minister of Defence of the Russian Federation. The event was also attended by Pyotr Tikhonovsky, the Organization’s deputy Secretary General.