NATO not among CSTO's immediate threats

MOSCOW - The Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) doesn't take the recent NATO military build-up as an immediate threat, the organization' s Secretary General Nikolai Bordyuzha said Tuesday.

Russia currently chairs the CSTO which also comprises Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan.

"There's no need to respond to (NATO military moves) so far, though we don't miss all their statements and actions," Bordyuzha told reporters during the Eurasian Youth Forum in the Russian city of Yekaterinburg.

The recent NATO military movements in Europe has been secondary to the transient political situation, Bordyuzha elaborated, adding that if the CSTO member countries would decide there is a need to undertake some counter measures, the corresponding decisions will be made "to reflect new realities."

Meanwhile, the CSTO countries, unlike NATO members, exercise restraint when it comes to the situation in Ukraine, he noted.

"We undertake no steps and try to make as few statements as possible over Ukraine," the official said, adding that NATO activities in that country has been provoking tension and aimed at "punishing" Moscow.

CSTO should not mirror that Western behavior, he added.

The CSTO has more urgent challenges to react on, Bordyuzha said, highlighting countering extremism in the bloc's countries and the volatile situation in Afghanistan as the most immediate threats.

Informational security also becomes CSTO priority, the official said, pointing at the cases when information technologies were instrumental to forcefully remove the governments.

Bordyuzha said the bloc could not put a blind eye on the attempts to deploy far-right activists to Russia for carrying out informational attacks and other subversive activity.