Tuesday, May 22, 2012 -
A senior Kazakh defense official has been appointed to lead the post-Soviet alliance Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), the security alliance said on Tuesday.
First Deputy Defense Minister general-colonel Saken Zhassuzakov was named as the new chief of the Joint Headquarters of CSTO, a military-political grouping of seven countries.
The Kazakh military official replaced his Belarusian counterpart major-general Pyotr Tikhonovskiy and will head the Joint Staff of the CSTO for the inter-session period, Russia’s RIA Novosti news agency reported the CSTO press release as saying.
The Kremlin-led military-political bloc comprises Central Asian republics Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan, along with Russia, Belarus, and Armenia.
In a related development, CSTO Secretary General Nikolay Bordyuzha told journalists in the Kazakh capital Astana on Monday that Kazakhstan will host expanded war games this September.
“This will be the first exercises of this scale. We are seriously preparing for them,” the Panarmenian.net news agency reported the Russian general as saying at the press conference in the Kazakh capital.