Russia and Kazakhstan joint counterterrorism drills to conclude today
Joint Russian-Kazak counterterrorism exercises being conducted in Serbia will conclude today.
The exercises, which focused on company-level tactical drills, saw over 500 Russian and Kazak troops participate. Forces rehearsed mountain warfare with the intent to neutralize a fictional terrorist gang using UAVs, helicopters and over 150 pieces of military hardware.
Kazakhstan, a former Soviet Union state, has close military ties to Russia through several different multilateral military organizations, including the Russian-led Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) and the Chinese-led Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO).
In the wake of the recent regime change in Afghanistan, regional security arrangements have accelerated their efforts to conduct counterterrorism exercises. Next week CSTO will conduct multilateral counterterrorist operations, and exercises planned for later in the year will focus on issues such as refugee migration and security threats coming out of Afghanistan.
In the short-term these exercises will further develop interoperability between regional security forces, developing shared tactics, techniques and procedures (TTPs). Shared TTPs increases forces’ ability to rapidly respond to emerging threats. Medium-term, if instability in Afghanistan fuels insurgency or terrorism groups—like ISIS-K—expect multilateral organizations like CSTO and SCO to take exercises one step further and develop operational counterterrorism units to combat the threat
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