MOSCOW. April 9 (Interfax-AVN) - Operations groups of the nations signatories to the Collective Security Treaty started to arrive at the Gorokhovets training ground in Russia's Nizhny Novgorod region on Tuesday to prepare for a joint military exercise, a spokesman for the CIS military cooperation coordination headquarters told Interfax-Military News Agency.
The first to arrive was the operations group of the Kazakh Armed Forces led by Colonel Artur Kaliyev, the spokesman said. It will prepare facilities for accommodation of an airborne assault unit that will take part in the joint training.
Operations groups of other five nations signatories to the treaty, these being Armenia, Belarus, Kyrgyzstan, Russia and Tajikistan, are to arrive at the training ground before April 18.
An operations group of the CIS cooperation headquarters is expected to arrive at the site in late April. The group led by deputy head of the headquarters' administration Major General Yevgeny Nikiforov will check the quality of engineering equipment and targets at the ground, as well as the units' readiness for the first military exercise under the auspices of the treaty.
The exercise will take place at the Gorokhovets training center of the Moscow military district from May 12 to 15. It will be timed to the 10th anniversary of the treaty's signing that is marked on May 15, 2002.
The war games will involve a Russian reinforced motorized rifle battalion, a Kazakh airborne assault company, a Kyrgyz paratrooper platoon without a squad, a Belarussian motorized rifle company and an Armenian motorized rifle company. Tajikistan will be represented by an operations group of officers and cadets of military institutes studying in Russia.