Tajik President Emomali Rahmon will participate in an informal meeting of CIS heads of state that will take place in St. Petersburg, the Northern Capital of Russia, from December 26-27. Tajik leader is expected to hold a number of bilateral meetings on the sidelines of this CIS informal summit.
The Tajik president’s press service says that “at the moment there is no definite plan for this trip.”
Meanwhile, Chairman of the CIS Executive Committee – CIS Executive Secretary Sergei Lebedev told reporters December 20 that CIS heads of state meet and interact every month. “There was just a very important meeting in Minsk. Next week there will be an equally important informal meeting of the CIS heads of state in St. Petersburg. This meeting will take place on 26-27 December at the invitation of the president of the Russian Federation. We hope that it will also give additional impetus to strengthening our cooperation.”
The Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) is a regional intergovernmental organization in Eurasia. It was formed following the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. It covers an area of 20,368,759 km2 and has an estimated population of 239,796,010. The CIS encourages cooperation in economic, political and military affairs and has certain powers relating to the coordination of trade, finance, lawmaking, and security. It has also promoted cooperation on cross-border crime prevention.
Currently, there are 9 members of the CIS: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Russia, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan. Two nations, Ukraine and Turkmenistan, have ratified the CIS Creation Agreement, making them “founding states of the CIS”, but did not ratify the subsequent Charter that would make them members of the CIS. Georgia quitted the CIS in 2009.
Ukraine formally ended its participation in CIS statutory bodies in 2018, although it had stopped participating in the organization much earlier. Ukraine has further stated that it intends to review its participation in all CIS agreements and only continue in those that are in its interests. Ukraine remains a member of the Commonwealth of Independent States Free Trade Area. After the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Russia–Ukraine relations were completely broken,
