CSTO Russia-led military alliance to set up crisis response center

June 26, 2015 - 16:37 AMT

PanARMENIAN.Net - Senior ministry and agency officials of the Russia-led military alliance of former Soviet states CSTO on Friday, June 26 discussed plans to establish a crisis response center to help member states deal with major security threats, a spokesman for the organisation said on Friday, TASS reports.

"Experts from CSTO ministries and agencies concerned discussed approaches to establishing the crisis response center and considered relevant draft statutes and regulations for information exchange," the Collective Security Treaty Organization's spokesman, Vladimir Zainetdinov, told TASS after discussions at the CSTO Secretariat.

He said that the new center will be based at an information technology complex for software and hardware development, which is currently being equipped in one of the Russian Defense Ministry’s military towns in Moscow.

Plans to set up the center were announced at a meeting of the organisation’s decision-making body, the Collective Security Council, in January.

CSTO Secretary-General Nikolay Bordyuzha said the center was expected to coordinate with Russia’s new National Defense Control Center, aimed at integrating the leadership and direction of defense and security structures in real time. The center would be part of the CSTO Secretariat and would coordinate work with the Joint Staff in an effort to make the crisis response system work in all member states of the alliance.

The CSTO, established in 1992, is headquartered in Moscow and comprised of Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia and Tajikistan. In 2002, the six post-Soviet states agreed to create the CSTO as a military alliance.

CSTO

The Collective Security Treaty Organization, formed under the framework of the Commonwealth of Independent States, serves as a mutual defense alliance among Russia, Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan. The Collective Security Treaty (CST) was signed on May 15, 1992 for five-year term, with the possibility of prolongation. On December 2, 2004 the General Assembly of the United Nations adopted the Resolution to grant the observer status to the Collective Security Treaty Organization in the General Assembly of the United Nations. The goal of the Collective Security Treaty Organization is to strengthen peace and international and regional security and stability and to ensure collective protection of independence, territorial integrity and sovereignty of Member States, in the attainment of which Member States shall give priority to political methods. On February 4, 2009, the CSTO leaders approved formation of Collective Rapid Reaction Force (RRF).