On Thursday evening, an informal meeting took place of of the Moscow-led Collective Treaty Security Organization, Lenta.ru reports. President Vladimir Putin and his fellow heads of state from Belarus, Armenia, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan visited a training session on management of the Russian armed forces. The situation in Ukraine was the main topic of the evening. Observers have speculated that Moscow could use the CSTO in some fashion to run a "peace-keeping operation" in the south of Ukraine with the support of allies in the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS).
The meeting evokes memories of how the Soviet-era Warsaw Pact was used to invade Czechoslovakia to come to the aid of a "fraternal government."
Lenta.ru was formerly an independent website, but recently its editor-in-chief was fired and an editor more compliant with the Kremlin line was installed. Some 39 journalists and editors quit in protest, but the site has remained open and is publishing mainly pro-government news, mixed with some neutral stories on topics like opposition demonstrations. We will continue to monitor the situation.
http://pressimus.com/Interpreter_Mag/press/2696
(the text below is from Lenta.ru and is not a machine translation.)
The visit of the presidents of Belarus, Armenia, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan was not planned in advance. Vladimir Putin summoned Aleksandr Lukashenka, Serzh Sargsyan, Almazbek Atambayev and Emomali Rakhmon to Moscow for emergency talks, the main topic of which was the situation in Ukraine. The invitation had a military sub-text from the outset. The heads of state visited a training about management of the armed forces of Russia. The practice for deflecting and delivering a nuclear strike, in the words of the Russian Commander-in-Chief, went successfully. The Ukrainian question will be discussed today by Putin and in bilateral meetings with his colleagues.
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In the opinion of experts, escalation of the violence in Ukraine could lead to the necessity of a Russian peace-keeping intervention. Moreover, the preparation of such an operation, essentially, is already underway. Thus, militia have managed to "open" the border in Lugansk Region between Russia and Ukraine for free movement of people and vehicles. Simultaneously, for the last week a group of 20 militiamen managed to destroy several Ukrainian radar stations, thus depriving the Ukrainian army of the possibility of controlling part of its air space. Lt. Gen. Leonid Ivashov, president of the Russian Academy of Geopolitical Problems believes that it is necessary to introduce a peace-keeping contingent under the aegis of the CSTO in Ukraine. Aleksandr Sobyanin, director of the strategic planning service of the Association for Border Cooperation is convinced that there is no need to deploy the CSTO for a "peace-keeping operation in Ukraine."
"Russia can announce its decision to introduce a peace-keeping contingent for the protection of civilians in Ukraine from rioting Nazis and appeal with a request to Belarus, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and a number of other states to support the anti-Nazi position of Russia through participation in the peace-keeping operation in Ukraine," Sobyanin told Lenta.ru.
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"Events have occurred in Ukraine which do not permit us to quietly sit by the side and watch what is happening there," Aleksandr Lukashenka stated after his meeting with Putin. In the opinion of the Belarusian head of state, above all this concerns the events in Odessa. "This in general leads us to bad parallels. And I see: these parallels have already appeared on the televisions screens. We remember Khatyn, when several hundreds of villages on the territory of Belarus were burned down by the fascists on that very same principle," he said. "Such actions are unacceptable in other countries, and it will be all the more unacceptable if we quietly watch what is going on there. This above all concerns the Russian Federation and Belarus. Naturally, we cannot look at this because those are our people there and they are calling for help and demanding reactions to such things," said Lukashenka, adding that the situation was developing very rapidly.
http://pressimus.com/Interpreter_Mag/press/2696
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