MOSCOW, 2 July (BelTA) – A unit in charge of nuclear, biological, and chemical protection (NBC) as well as medical support is being established as part of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO). The necessary documents have already been reconciled, the CSTO Joint Staff press service told BelTA.
According to the source, representatives of the defense ministries of the CSTO member states consulted in the CSTO Joint Staff in Moscow to discuss the establishment of a joint nuclear, biological, and chemical protection and medical support unit. The meeting was supposed to help work out common approaches to establishing the new unit and to providing the legislative framework.
Representatives of the defense ministries of Belarus, Armenia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, and Tajikistan took part in the videoconference meeting. Chief of the Office for Planning the Deployment of Troops (Collective Forces), Deputy Chief of the Center for Planning the Deployment and Training of Troops (Collective Forces), Lieutenant-General Anatoly Yakovlev presided over the meeting.
Anatoly Yakovlev noted that considering the negative consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic the CSTO member states should consolidate efforts to counteract the new global threat. The Collective Security Treaty Organization needs potential for promptly and effectively responding to such threats.
The NBC unit is supposed to deploy in a CSTO member state for the sake of protecting the organization's forces and enabling safe medical and biological conditions for the deployment of such forces, conditions for a collective response to a large-scale and rapid spread of dangerous infectious diseases. Participants of the session discussed and reconciled the draft documents on setting up the NBC unit that the CSTO Joint Staff had prepared. The documents were worked out taking into account the Russian Defense Ministry's experience of participation of combined NBC protection and medical support units during events designed to fight the pandemic in Russia and abroad.
The NBC protection and medical support unit is being created as part of the action plan on implementing decisions of the CSTO Collective Security Council session, as part of the work to fulfill the priority guidelines suggested by Tajikistan for the period of its presidency in the organization, and as part of the work to fulfill instructions of the CSTO Military Committee.
