Photo:
RIA Novosti
Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev on Friday will take part in the opening ceremony of the III winter World military games to be held in Sochi. As reported in the press service of the Cabinet, the Prime Minister will also visit Westminster winter World military games.
III world winter games will be held in the period 22 to 28 February at the Olympic sports venues of the coastal and mountain clusters of Sochi in seven sports: ski racing, biathlon (including patrol race), skiing, orienteering on skis, ski mountaineering, climbing, short-track. The opening ceremony of the competition will be held in the arena “Ice cube”.
The games will be played 44 sets of medals. In competitions will take part more than 400 military athletes from 26 countries: Russian Federation, Austria, Armenia, Belarus, Belgium, Bulgaria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Germany, Greece, Iran, Spain, Italy, Kazakhstan, China, Lebanon, Macedonia, Mongolia, Pakistan, Republic of Korea, Serbia, Slovenia, Tajikistan, Turkey, Finland, France and Switzerland.
International military sports Council (Conseil International du Sport Militaire, CISM) was founded on 18 February 1948 in nice (France) five countries: Belgium, Denmark, France, Luxembourg and the Netherlands.
The main objective of CISM is to establish close and permanent ties between the armed forces of different countries in the field of sports and physical education; the motto of CISM is “Friendship through sport”. CISM includes 135 countries and is the largest sports organisation after the International Olympic Committee and the International University sports Federation. A distinctive feature of CISM in that it brings together military athletes only. The armed forces of the USSR was admitted to the CISM may 10, 1991.
CISM annually holds world Championships as the summer and winter sports on different continents. Summer military world games are held since 1995, every four years (similar to Olympics). Winter world military games were held earlier in 2010 and 2013.