Russia has donated five air defense complexes to Kazakhstan, a (small) part of a planned joint air defense system shared between Russia and its allies.
Kazakhstan's Ministry of Defense this week announced the delivery of five complexes of the S-300PS air defense system, which arrived by train from Russia to Almaty. The donation was announced first in 2009, then again last January, when Moscow said they would be delivered by the end of 2014.
More significantly, the donation was supposed to be of five divisions of the system, and a division consists of 12 complexes -- so Russia still has 55 more to deliver. The Kazakhstan MoD made no mention of any future deliveries, or the previous announcement, so it's not sure where things stand.
When the donation was announced last year, Russian Deputy Defense Minister Anatoliy Antonov said that with the move "we are strengthening not only Kazakhstan, but the air defense of the CSTO," referring to the Collective Security Treaty Organization, the Russia-led defense bloc that also includes Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan. (Armenia has the same system as Kazakhstan was just given, as does Belarus.)
The joint CSTO air defense system has been slow to get off the ground, though several military officials said at the end of last year that while they acknowledged that up to that point it was mainly just talk, now they were getting serious.
"We see that reports periodically appear in the media about the creation of air defense systems on a bilateral basis, in particular with Armenia and Kazakhstan, but clearly these are only announcements and intentions, they're only now starting to talk about practical steps," the former head of Russia's air defense forces said. Five complexes is a step beyond announcements and intentions, but not much of one.
Joshua Kucera, a senior correspondent, is Eurasianet's former Turkey/Caucasus editor and has written for the site since 2007.
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