As of today, Defense Minister Vlado Misajlovski is participating in the two-day meeting of the North Atlantic Council, at Defense Minister level in Brussels.
This is NATO’s first high-level meeting since the Washington Summit and also the first meeting chaired by the new Secretary General Mark Rutte.
In the separate sessions, the main topics of discussion are: deterrence and defense of the Alliance, support for Ukraine, and strengthening the cooperation with the countries of the Indo-Pacific.
The purpose of the meeting is to review the implementation of the decisions from the Washington Summit in order to strengthen the capacities of the Alliance to respond to growing threats and challenges.
A meeting of the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS member countries was held today, organized by the United States, and chaired by Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin. Minister Misajlovski emphasized that dealing with terrorism remains essential for collective defense, within which the Macedonian Government will continue to cooperate with its allies.
In addition to a high representative of the European Union, the Defense Ministers of Australia, Japan, New Zealand and the Republic of Korea were invited for the first time to the session with global partners, to discuss the current challenges and the indivisibility of global security.
A special session is dedicated to strengthening the cooperation with Ukraine and strengthening global partnerships. In the presence of President Volodymyr Zelensky and Defense Minister Rustem Umerov, the new NATO Command for Security Assistance and Training for Ukraine, financial support and other initiatives that will enable long-term assistance will be discussed.
On the sidelines of the meetings, Minister Misajlovski held separate bilateral meetings with his colleagues from Albania, Norway and Slovenia, and pledged to further strengthen bilateral cooperation in the field of defense.
Misajlovski: The members of the Special Forces Battalion and the rapid Deployment Unit show the synergy, quality and professionalism that prevails among the members of these units
Today, Minister of Defense Vlado Misajlovski, together with Minister of the Interior, Panče Toškovski, the Chief of the General Staff, Major General Saško Lafchiski and the Director of the Public Security Bureau, Aleksandar Janev, attended a methodical mountaineering exercise, Search, Rescue and Evacuation of Injured in the hard-to-access part of Demir Kapija”, which is jointly carried out by members of the Special Forces Battalion of the Army and the Rapid Deployment Unit of the Ministry of the Interior in the area of Demir Kapija.
After today’s exercise, Minister Misajlovski emphasized that the teamwork of two elite units shows the synergy, quality and professionalism that prevails among the members of these units, which additionally means continuous improvement and strengthening of capacities.
“These special units should be respected by everyone in the country, because wherever an accident happens or whatever happens within the framework of the security of the country, they are always the first to respond. That is why I want to thank them once again on my personal behalf, and on behalf of the citizens because their work is really difficult”, Misajlovski said and added that in order to continue the development of the Army units, it is necessary to invest as much as possible. “We will invest as much as possible in our budgets, because we should never save for these exercises for these special units, because they are truly the pride of Macedonia.”
The joint training in Military Mountaineering takes place in the period 7-14 October under the mentorship of Military Mountaineering instructors from the Special Forces Battalion and it includes practicing and mastering techniques for searching, rescuing and evacuating the injured in difficult-to-access terrain.
