MINSK, May 5 (RIA Novosti) – Members of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) are interested in peace and stability in Ukraine, the organization’s Executive Secretary Sergei Lebedev said Monday.
Lebedev said he “discussed the events in Ukraine with worry and concern” during a meeting with Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko earlier in the day.
He added that Ukraine’s CIS membership will benefit both Kiev and the organization.
Lukashenko said ahead of the meeting that the organization needs to be preserved, “although the commonwealth is not quite what we want it to be.”
The day after Crimea signed a reunification treaty with Russia on March 18, Kiev announced it would abandon its post as this year's rotating head of the CIS, adding it may reconsider its membership in the organization soon.
Ukraine limited its presence in the organization’s executive committee in April.
Belarus will hold organization’s rotating presidency this year instead of Ukraine.
The loose alliance of former Soviet states has nine full-fledged members: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. Turkmenistan and Ukraine have ratified the creation agreement, but stopped short of formalizing their membership by ratifying the CIS charter.
Georgia withdrew from the CIS after a brief military conflict with Russia over its breakaway republic of South Ossetia in 2008.
