Military and technical cooperation (MTC) among the CIS countries includes design, production, deliveries, operation, modernization, repair of armaments and military equipment (AME) as well as technical support for the Armed Forces of particular states, united air defense system development and operation, military and technical personnel training. Despite its active efforts Russia failed to strengthen the CIS military and economic relations during the recent years. But the fact that most of the Russian, the Belorussian and the Ukrainian defense plants managed to preserve their cooperation ties proves that the CIS inter-state MTC potential hasn’t been used up yet.

Russia is interested to keep the CIS countries’ markets for new Russian AME supplies, to use the CIS military-industrial capabilities to repair the Russian military equipment, to coordinate the AME export policy with other CIS exporters, to involve other countries’ scientific potential in the 5^th -6^th generation military equipment development.

The military and technical cooperation with Belarus and Ukraine is conducted both in the frames of the CIS and on bilateral level. Activities of the CIS structures such as Defense Ministers Counsel, Staff for Coordination of Military Cooperation and Military and Technical Committee include top-priority actions of mutual interest, development of the MTC Program for the CIS states, coordination of the CIS countries’ policy on the AME export prices and lists.

Elaboration of the MTC Program met with serious difficulties because some countries refused to give Russia information about their military production capabilities, AME import interest, and estimation of the foreign threat. Since the terms of the Program adoption were several times postponed, the Military and Technical Committee criticized its general cooperation approach, based on multilateral agreements, and took the decision to shift to practical actions in the frames of bilateral relations.

The Agreement on terms of cooperation in military products and services export to the third countries was designed to coordinate the CIS export policy. Opposed by Belarus and Ukraine that the most actively participate in such activities the Agreement wasn’t concluded.

The Russian-Belorussian MTC is based on military-industrial cooperation among plants of two countries that includes AME repair and modernization, mutual supplies of spare parts, maintenance and AME co-production. Further development of the military-industrial cooperation is restrained by some reason of legal character. Belarus isn’t interested to coordinate with Russian side its policy on armaments supplies to the third countries. The Belorussians consider the development of the two countries’ combined, and in future – united, defense order and armaments programs as the key task for the bilateral military-industrial cooperation. To perform it additional efforts should be taken to unify the legislation, to level the economic figures, to prepare single currency introduction. Now the Russian leadership isn’t still sure that the real unification will have more advantages than losses.

The Russian-Ukrainian agreement on industrial, scientific and technical cooperation promoted the development of bilateral relations in the field of MTC. This cooperation will be further strengthened if actions that failed to be done in the CIS frames are undertaken on the bilateral basis. The Russian AME supplies to Ukraine and collective armaments repair and modernization can be mentioned among these actions. Such progressive form of cooperation as consortium for collective design and production of new equipment should be more actively used. Both Russia and Ukraine will also benefit if problems that are related to the armaments export policy to the foreign states are resolved. But despite the fact that the two countries’ largest armaments exporters agreed to refrain from any actions that will lead to mutual damage they failed to accept more specific obligations. Besides it the significant development of the Russian-Ukrainian MTC is hindered by the fact that the participation in the CIS military and political cooperation isn’t among Ukraine’s foreign policy priorities. Supported by the West Kiev strives to become a mediator in NATO’s MTC with Georgia, Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan.

In general the military-industrial cooperation is a significant part of Russia’s MTC with Ukraine and Belarus. Dozens of plants are still combined for implementation of particular production programs. The coordination and function distribution among the Russian organizations that participate in the MTC should be improved to increase the efficacy of this work.