国际英语新闻:CSTO chief sees U.S.-led military drill in Ukraine a provocation

MOSCOW, Sept. 22 (Xinhua) -- The ongoing U.S.-led military drill in Ukraine did nothing but inciting the conflicting parties, the secretary general of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) said Monday.

"This looks like a situation where two are scuffling and the third gives a knife to one of them," Nikolai Bordyuzha told reporters.

He said the multinational military exercises, code-named "Rapid Trident" 2014, would "provoke the conflict to continue" and lead to further deterioration of the Ukraine crisis.

The two-week drill kicked off near the western Ukrainian town of Yavoriv last Monday. It pulls together some 1,200 servicemen from 15 countries and focuses on peacekeeping operations and is designed to support interoperability with allied and partner countries.

Bordyuzha said it was too early to make assessments on whether the ceasefire accord signed in Minsk, capital of Belarus, has been implemented. Still, he said, the trend was positive as the scale of using arms by the confronting sides has largely decreased.

According to the secretary general, the Moscow-led CSTO is not mulling to send peacekeepers to Ukraine. Neither is the bloc considering its expansion, though it cooperates with 26 countries.

"We have no applications (on accession)," Interfax news agency quoted Bordyuzha as saying.

The CSTO, which groups Russia, Armenia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Belarus, warned in May that no international military-political bloc should interfere with the Ukraine crisis.