The leaders of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) will gather in St. Petersburg on December 26-27 for the traditional New Year's Eve informal summit. The meeting will be held at the initiative of Russian President Vladimir Putin, the Kremlin press service reported earlier.
Chairman of the Executive Committee - CIS Executive Secretary Sergei Lebedev expressed the hope that the summit will give an additional impetus to strengthening cooperation both in the Commonwealth and in the Union State of Belarus and Russia. Specifically, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko arrived in Russia on Saturday, then visited the Cosmonaut Training Center in Zvezdnyi Gorodok. On Sunday, Lukashenko left for St. Petersburg.
As reported by the Uzbek side, the participants of the informal summit will discuss the issues of expanding cooperation in the CIS, sum up the main results of the outgoing year and exchange views on priority directions of practical cooperation.
Russian presidential press secretary Dmitry Peskov, commenting on the possibility of a trilateral meeting between Putin, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and Azerbaijani leader Ilham Aliyev, said that they "will have the opportunity to talk" in the margins of the event.
The previous informal summit of the CIS was also held in St. Petersburg on October 7, Russian leader's birthday. It was also followed by a meeting of the CIS Council of Heads of State on October 14 in Astana. Following the meeting a package of documents was adopted including, in particular, the program of cooperation in combating terrorism and extremism, an agreement on combating corruption, decisions to obtain the observer status in the CSTO by the Commonwealth, the creation of an international organization to support and promote the Russian language.
In general, Putin spoke about the fact that the CIS had come a long way in three decades and had established itself as a respected regional integration association. Separately, he drew attention to the fact that under current conditions, despite the sanctions pressure, economic ties within the Commonwealth "are consistently expanding," including the intensification of joint activities on import substitution, strengthening of technological and financial sovereignty. The Russian leader also praised the efforts of the states to switch to national currencies in mutual settlements.
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Based on materials from TASS