RUSSIA TRAINS PERSONNEL FOR THE CIS COLLECTIVE SECURITY TREATY ORGANIZATION
by Victor Mikhailov
DEFENSE and SECURITY
April 2, 2008 Wednesday
Russia
WHAT MILITARY COLLEGES TRAIN PERSONNEL FOR COUNTRIES OF THE CIS
COLLECTIVE SECURITY TREATY ORGANIZATION?; The Duma ratified the
agreement on personnel training for the armies of Russia’s allies.
Even though the Duma is mostly comprised of the ruling United
Russia party, the unity the lower house of parliament demonstrated
by ratifying the agreement to train personnel for the CIS Collective
Security Treaty Organization is impressive all the same. The resolution
was adopted by 441 vote out of 450.
Post-Soviet countries grasped the importance of qualified personnel
in the very first years of their sovereignty. Russia has been training
personnel – for a fee and gratis – for CIS armies since 1996.
Presenting the ratification agreement in the Duma, Deputy Defense
Minister General of the Army, Nikolai Pankovm said Russia intended to
set aside 1.115 billion rubles for its implementation this year. In
fact, the three-year Russian budget specified analogous sums for
2009 and 2010 as well. It is fair to add that personnel training
free of charge is an invention of the CIS Collective Security Treaty
Organization that is practiced nowhere else.
Plain figures prove that this form of education is in high demand.
Military colleges of the Russian Defense Ministry received 159 trainees
from the CIS Collective Security Treaty Organization countries in
2003, 388 in 2004, and 795 in 2005. Training and maintenance of 434
servicemen is going to cost their respective countries absolutely
nothing (including 238 men from Kazakhstan, 84 from Tajikistan, 65 from
Armenia, 39 from Kyrgyzstan, and 8 from Belarus. Free training (but
not maintenance) is applied to 152 servicemen from Kazakhstan, 95 from
Armenia, 59 from Belarus, 31 from Kyrgyzstan, and 24 from Tajikistan.
All in all, almost 2,500 servicemen from the armies of Armenia,
Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan train
at military colleges in Russia nowadays. Many more have already
been trained. Say, over 2,500 officers of the Kazakh regular army
were trained in Russia and almost 800 of them studied at military
academies of the Russian Defense Ministry.
In November 2005, the Council of Defense Ministers of the CIS
Collective Security Treaty Organization compiled the list of military
colleges to participate in the international training program. Most of
them (45) are Russian, 6 Belarussian, and 3 Kazakh, an the remaining
three are Armenia, Kyrgyz, and Tajik (one each). The list comprises
57 colleges, institutes, and academies training specialists in all
military occupation specialties the CIS Collective Security Treaty
Organization needs.
What Russian military colleges are particularly popular with foreign
regular armies?
Where low-level officer training is concerned, the colleges in
question belong to the Air Force and Antiaircraft Forces, and the
ones training specialists for military engineers and communications
troops. Countries of the CIS Collective Security Treaty Organization
mostly train their own commanders of motorized infantry, armored, and
artillery units. Collapse of the USSR left practically all of them
(save for Armenia and Tajikistan) with military colleges on their
territories – like the Tashkent military college of armored troops,
military colleges in Alma-Ata, and so on. By the way, Russia has been
training space specialists for The Republic of Kazakhstan since 2006.
The list of colleges where officers obtain higher military education
greatly expands the diapason of military occupation specialties.
Nearly 350 officers from countries of the CIS Collective Security
Treaty Organization study at Russian military academies these days.
Seven of them study at the Military Academy of the General Staff,
76 at the Combined Arms Academy, over 80 at Gagarin and Zhukovsky
Armed Forces academies, 20 plus at the Academy of Communications and
Academy of Logistics each.
There are servicemen from the CIS Collective Security Treaty
Organization armies at the Mikhailov Academy of Artillery, Mozhaisky
Space Academy, and Kuznetsov Naval Academy as well.
In fact, other countries of the CIS Collective Security Treaty
Organization train personnel for allies as well. There are Armenian,
Kazakh, and Uzbek servicemen at Belarussian military colleges,
Kyrgyz and Tajik at Uzbek ones. It was recently announced that some
Belarussians were admitted to the Chinese language department of the
Institute of Foreign Languages of the Russian Defense Ministry.
"Integration in the sphere of military and military-technical
cooperation within the CIS Collective Security Treaty Organization is
quite successful. Regional army groups and Central Asian Fast Response
Collective Forces were established. Combat training is carried out
there in accordance with common planes and curricula.
Practically all involved armies handle Russian (Soviet) weapons and
military hardware. Joint command bodies are set up whenever these
international army groups are to be deployed on the decision of the
Collective Security Council. This international personnel training
framework is a must for proper control and use of military hardware,"
Valery Semerikov, Deputy General Secretary of the CIS Collective
Security Treaty Organization, said.