MOSCOW. April 26 (Interfax) - Destructive actions undertaken by Western countries led by the United States pose a serious external threat to the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), CIS Executive Committee Chairman Sergei Lebedev said in an interview published in the Izvestia newspaper on Thursday.
"The destructive actions undertaken by the West led by the U.S. to stir up tensions in the military-political situation pose a serious external threat to countries of the Commonwealth. By viewing the contemporary world along the lines of the 'friend or foe', 'with us or against us' logic, a number of Western countries are making attempts in a brutal manner to use the factor of strength in order to advance their own interests. The strikes that were delivered on Syria undermine the entire system of international relations," Lebedev said.
"In recent years, Western states, interfering in sovereign states' internal affairs, have chosen to use military aerospace forces increasingly frequently. Under these circumstances, the problem of ensuring aerospace security can be successfully resolved only through uniting efforts of all branches of the Armed Forces of the CIS member states in the presence of their centralized command on the scale of collective security regions. An important part of such an approach could become the creation and use of a joint aerospace defense system," he said.
"With this end in view, there are plans to use the existing platform of the CIS member states' joint air defense system to build an aerospace defense system of the states that are signatories to the February 10, 1995 agreement on creating a joint air defense system of the CIS member states," he said.