MINSK. Feb 17 (Interfax) - The Belarusian Defense Ministry has called for "more consolidation" within the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO).
"One can hear the opinion that the CSTO has become outdated, but we believe the organization still has great prospects. You only need to listen to our commander-in-chief, who has called for more consolidation," Leonid Kasinsky, aide to the Belarusian defense minister and chief of the ministry's ideological department, said on Radio Minsk.
"The January 2022 events in Kazakhstan can serve as a vivid example of the CSTO's capabilities, where it took literally just a few hours to make a decision on providing assistance, put together a taskforce, and redeploy it," Kasinsky said.
"None of the so-called Western partners expected the CSTO peacekeeping forces to be that efficient," he said.
"After all, when a decision is made on employing some NATO taskforce, it takes not hours, not even days or weeks, to put it into practice," he said.
As reported earlier, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko signed a plan of events to implement the CSTO Collective Security Council's decisions. In particular, it envisions three CSTO exercises codenamed Interaction, Echelon, and Search to be conducted in Belarus in 2023,.
The CSTO is comprised of Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, and Tajikistan. Armenia has taken over CSTO chairmanship from Belarus in 2023.