Agency WPS
DEFENSE and SECURITY (Russia)
November 24, 2006 Friday

MOSCOW AND MINSK MOVE THE BORDER CLOSER TO NATO

by Vladimir Mukhin

F-16S COME TO POLAND, AND RUSSIA RESPONDS WITH S-300 SYSTEMS IN
BELARUS; The CIS Council of Defense Ministers and the counterpart
council for the CIS Collective Security Treaty Organization will meet
today in Minsk, Belarus. Russia and Belarus are expected to sign an
agreement establishing the United Air Defense System.

The CIS Council of Defense Ministers and the counterpart council for
the CIS Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) will meet
today in Minsk, Belarus. Such meetings take place twice a year.
Routine as they usually are, the meetings today promise a sensation.
Russian Air Force Commander Army General Vladimir Mikhailov and his
Belarusian counterpart Lieutenant-General Oleg Paferov maintain that
the two countries are expected to sign an agreement establishing the
United Air Defense System.

Moscow and Minsk have been toying with the idea these last seven
years. Implementation of the project was constantly impeded by
financial considerations (the cost of the project, in other words)
and organizational difficulties. Previously unsolvable, all these
problems were solved this year. As soon as the Alliance expanded. Its
expansion provided the previously absent stimulus for the
Russian-Belarusian military integration. In fact, the stimulus was so
strong as to make Moscow and Minsk forget about the current coldness
of the bilateral relations and even the specter of the gas war
between the countries.

According to Paferov, the bilateral agreement will solve a whole
number of problems including that of procurement of military hardware
from Russia. It is to be bought for the United Air Defense System now
and not for Belarus as such. System commander will be given the power
to make decisions on the use of Belarusian and Russian forces and
means entirely on his own, without running them by Minsk first.
Moscow gave Belarus a present – two batteries of S-300 air defense
systems, in addition to the two batteries already protecting the
Brest area. Two batteries more will be deployed in the vicinity of
Grodno before the year is over. All together, they will comprise the
115th Brigade of the Belarusian Air Force and Air Defense Forces
which in its turn will become an element of the United Air Defense
System.

Official Moscow (the Russian Defense Ministry) openly admits that
deployment of S-300s in Belarus is a response to procurement of 48
F-16 fighters by Poland. "The Russian Air Force is ready for an
adequate response to this situation," Mikhailov said. "NATO aircraft
are free to land all over Europe. That’s what we are forming the
Russian-Belarusian United Air Defense System." Sources in the
Belarusian Air Force and Air Defense Forces point out that the new
brigade of the air defense systems pushes the aerial target detection
border 400 kilometers back in the western direction and the killing
zone 150 kilometers back. S-300s are designed to repel mass air
strikes, even those that include guided missiles and stealth
aircraft. The systems are also good for ICBM intercepts.

Bilateral accords between Russia and other CIS countries are to be
signed at the meeting of the CIS Council of Defense Ministers today.
Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov will sign 2007 military cooperation
annual plans with representatives of the defense ministries of
Azerbaijan, Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan.
An analogous document with Ukraine is to be signed during Ivanov’s
visit to Kiev in early December.

Georgia and Turkmenistan chose to ignore the Brest meeting.
Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, Russia’s allies in the CSTO, sent deputy
defense ministers – correspondingly Major-General Bulat Janasayev and
Colonel Rustam Niyazov.

CSTO defense ministers are supposed to sum up a recent joint
exercise, Border 2006 on the Caspian Sea. The exercise was commanded
by Army General Muhtar Altynbayev, Defense Minister of Kazakhstan.
His absence from Brest certainly looks odd.

Moreover, CSTO Secretary General Nikolai Bordyuzha is supposed to
update defense ministers on restoration of Uzbekistan’s membership in
the structure. How is he going to do so if Tashkent is not
represented by its defense minister? The Defense Ministries of
Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan decline to comment, let alone explain, for
the time being.

Source: Nezavisimaya Gazeta, November 23, 2006, pp. 1, 7

Translated by A. Ignatkin