TSAMTO, April 28. Exactly 20 years ago – on April 28, 2003 in Dushanbe, the CSTO Collective Security Council decided to create a permanent working body – the CSTO Joint Staff.
According to the Department of Information and Mass Communications of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation, the Joint Headquarters is a unique multinational military collective in which generals and officers of Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia and Tajikistan serve, tasks related to the formation, functioning and use of Troops (Collective Forces), training and conducting together with defense The departments of the member states Organize joint operational and combat training events, military–technical cooperation, coordination of joint training of personnel and specialists for the armed forces of the member states, as well as with the organization of the functioning of the CSTO Crisis Response Center.
The main efforts in the activities of the CSTO Joint Staff, headed by Colonel-General Anatoly Sidorov, are focused on organizing the implementation of decisions of the heads of the CSTO member states, heads of defense departments on the development of the military component of the Organization.
All these years, the Joint Staff of the CSTO has played and continues to play an important organizing and coordinating role in the creation, development, planning, application and preparation for the tasks of assigning the forces and means of the Organization's collective security system capable of effectively responding to modern challenges and threats to military security in the Eastern European, Caucasian and Central Asian regions..
For two decades, with the very direct participation of the military personnel of the Joint Staff, the necessary regulatory legal framework regulating the activities of the Organization in all areas of collective security has been developed and is being continuously improved. To date, 60 international treaties have been concluded on the most fundamental issues of interstate cooperation in the field of collective security, more than 1800 documents have been signed at the level of heads of state, secretaries of security councils, as well as heads of key ministries – defense and foreign affairs of our states.
Within the framework of coalition military construction, the Joint Staff, together with the CSTO Secretariat, interested ministries and departments of the CSTO member states, pays great attention to the development of all components of the Troops (Collective Forces) The CSTO, bringing their structure, composition and equipment in line with the real challenges and threats to the military security of states, improving preparation for the fulfillment of tasks for their intended purpose.
With the organizational and coordinating role of the Joint Staff, the Collective Rapid Deployment Forces of the Central Asian region, the Collective Rapid Response Forces, the CSTO Peacekeeping Forces, and the Collective Aviation Forces are being further developed. In order to ensure an adequate and effective response to modern challenges and threats to collective security, work is underway to create new elements in the composition of the Troops (Collective Forces) CSTO. In 2022, in connection with the emergence of threats to biological security, the decision of the heads of state created a joint formation of the RCB of protection and medical support.
Work continues to build up the peacekeeping potential of the Organization, including strengthening its medical component, in the interests of its involvement in international peacekeeping activities under the auspices of the UN. Thus, in order to create a joint (consolidated) medical formation of the CSTO member states in 2022, medical groups and medical specialists from the CSTO member states are included in the CSTO Peacekeeping Forces.
In order to use the potential of the general staffs, the rear of the armed forces, and other leading military administration bodies of the CSTO member states in preparing proposals and implementing decisions on the development of the military component of the Organization with the direct participation of the Joint Staff under the Council of Defense Ministers of the CSTO, a Military Committee, working groups on logistics, electronic warfare, as well as coordination of joint training of military personnel and scientific work.
Joint operational and combat training of forces and means of the collective security system is one of the priorities of the CSTO Joint Staff. Almost every year when organizing the role of Staff in the format Organization in the regions of collective security Treaty organisation conducted a series of joint and special exercises, including CSIS CAR Rubezh (conducted in 2004); with the CSTO military "Cooperation" (2009); with the forces and means of the intelligence departments and services "Search" (2016); with the forces and means of the logistics of the "Echelon" (2019); with the Peacekeeping forces of the CSTO "Indestructible brotherhood" (2012).
Since 2017, the highest form of joint training in the CSTO format has been the joint operational-strategic exercise "Combat Brotherhood", which is conducted in one or several regions of collective security at the same time and includes a set of joint activities that are interconnected by goals, objectives, place, time in a single military-political and military-strategic environment.
During the preparation and during the exercises, together with the defense departments, a large amount of research work is organized and carried out on the most pressing problematic issues of the development of the military component of the Organization with the involvement of relevant specialists of basic educational and methodological and research organizations, including the organization of intelligence, air defense, the use of aviation components, and other issues.
Much attention is paid in the Joint Headquarters to the issues of improving the CSTO crisis response mechanisms. The capabilities of the Crisis Response Center are used annually to conduct strategic command and staff training and joint business games, coordinate the regrouping of national contingents and conduct joint command and staff and special exercises in the CSTO format, as well as other joint training of Troops (Collective Forces) CSTO.
In total, since the beginning of its operation, over 320 international events have been held using the resources of the Central Committee, including with the participation of heads of state, heads of defense departments, general staffs, as well as consultations and working meetings of representatives of interested ministries and departments of the member states on the most important issues of the development of the military component of the Organization and joint training of the Collective Forces of the CSTO.
To date, according to the initiatives of the Joint Staff, by decisions of the CSTO bodies, the status of basic educational and methodological organizations has been given to 11 military educational institutions that train in the specialties: combined arms, air defense, missile forces and artillery, military air defense, communications, logistics, information security, electronic warfare, training of personnel of the CSTO Peacekeeping Forces, medical and pharmaceutical specialties, as well as training personnel responsible for ensuring national security and defense capability of the Organization's member states, and the status of basic research organizations – 7 specialized scientific and educational organizations.
In 2022, the system was replenished with the basic organization for mine clearance – the International Mine Action Center of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, designed to train, retrain and improve the skills of specialists in the field of mine clearance for the CSTO member states, as well as to perform mine clearance tasks in the CSTO area of responsibility, including as part of consolidated international units.
In the 2022/2023 academic year, admission to military educational institutions of the Republic of Armenia, the Republic of Belarus, the Republic of Kazakhstan and the Russian Federation was organized according to 1871 allocated quotas in 59 educational institutions that study in 827 specialties. In total, over the years of cooperation in the military educational institutions of the Organization's states, about 24 thousand servicemen have been co-trained.
In the field of military-technical cooperation, joint work with the CSTO Secretariat continues on the formation and improvement of the regulatory legal framework of the Organization, as well as the implementation of practical measures, programs and plans for equipping Troops (Collective Forces) The CSTO is equipped with modern weapons, military and special equipment, and special means.
On the most important and problematic issues of legal regulation, the Joint Staff in its work reliably relies on the potential of the relevant defense and security committees of the legislative authorities of the CSTO member states. To this end, the Headquarters has been working for a long time at the expert level in close cooperation with the Secretariat of the CSTO Parliamentary Assembly and its other working bodies, and representatives of the CSTO interparliamentary commissions have long been frequent and active observers at joint exercises.
For 20 years, the CSTO Joint Staff has developed into a workable and efficient body capable of solving a wide range of tasks at the interstate level, promptly preparing coordinated proposals and draft decisions for the military-political leadership. This is confirmed by the coordinated work of the staff of the Joint Staff in January 2022, when the Collective Forces of the CSTO for the first time in 30 years since the signing of the Collective Security Treaty were actually involved in normalizing the situation on the territory of the Republic of Kazakhstan in connection with the emergence of a threat to the security, stability and sovereignty of the country, caused, inter alia, by outside interference. The peacekeeping operation demonstrated to the world community that the CSTO is a real force capable of responding promptly to any crisis situations.
Speaking about the 20th anniversary, Colonel-General Anatoly Sidorov noted that "in modern conditions of increasing challenges and threats to collective security and in the distant future, the Joint Staff, as the most important element of the CSTO collective security system, will make every effort to ensure the Organization's readiness to respond adequately and effectively to possible crisis situations, will continue to successfully solve tasks on the development of Troops (Collective Forces) The CSTO and ensuring the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the Organization's member states."