The key issue of the summit is how the Eurasian military-political union will react to new threats and challenges. In particular: US statement about withdrawing from the treaty on medium and short-range missiles, large-scale NATO exercises in Norway, the growth of terrorist and extremist activism in Central Asia, Afghanistan and North Africa.
The adaptation of the CSTO to a new conflict reality in Eurasia - this is how analysts define the main meaning of the current Summit. The new challenges include aggressive rhetoric of NATO, the growth of tensions, including the new arms race and the demonstrative collapse of the basic agreements on missiles in Europe. In two years, the situation has turned from threatening statements to the most ambitious NATO exercises since the Cold War.
American and European analysts admitted that the East is not the "pioneer of the conflict". Rather, the new head of the American White House is behaving unpredictably, making both NATO and the Baltic countries with Poland nervous.
On the eve of the CSTO summit the President of Belarus has already outlined the position of the allies - we are not provoking a confrontation, on the contrary we are investing in the security and stability of the whole continent, but if the words become reality, we will have to respond to every unfriendly gesture.
Andrei Kortunov, Director General of the Russian Council on International Affairs: "Maybe it’s time for us to speak not about arms control, but about joint arms management. They also talked about space and cyber-weapons, some even talked about the prospects of genetic weapons. This, of course, is one of the European security issues."
