Seven countries of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) will test the combat readiness of the joint air defense system during a training session that began on Friday, the Russian Defense Ministry said.

"More than 130 command posts of various levels of seven CIS member states have begun to work out tasks to improve the interaction of the command and control bodies of the CIS joint air defense system," the ministry said.

As part of the training, the use of air defense forces against aircrafts violating the airspace and the state borders of the CIS member states, and against hijacked aircraft will be worked out.

The training began with the detection by the air defense forces in the East European and Central Asian regions of control targets denoting a conditional air enemy, the role of which is played by Tu-160 strategic missile carriers, as well as Tu-22M3 long-range aviation bombers of the Russian Aerospace Forces.

The training involved more than 60 fighter aircraft Su-27, MiG-29, MiG-31, Yak-130 bomber aircraft Su-24, Su-34, attack aircraft Su-25, long-range aviation Tu-22m3, Tu-160, helicopters Ka-27, Mi-8 of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, as well as units of radio-technical and anti-aircraft missile forces, allocated to the joint air defense system from these states.

Aircraft crews will conduct reciprocal maneuvers to identify aircraft violating the state border, vessels violating the procedure for using the airspace, hijacked aircraft.

The air defense forces and units involved in the exercise are controlled from the Aerospace Forces Command Center, stationed in Moscow.