CIS at 30 Becoming ‘a Valdai Club’ for Presidents, Byshok Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Oct. 16 – Speaking at a meeting of CIS leaders on the 30^th anniversary of that organization’s founding, Vladimir Putin said that the group had “exhausted” its current possibilities and must evolve to deal with new challenges. None of the leaders challenged him, but neither they nor others appear to see much change of Putin’s plan being realized.

            Stanislav Byshovk, vice president of the Belarusian-Russian Union Civic Initiative, for example, said that in his view, “the CIS is being transformed into something like the Valdai Forum” but with presidents rather than experts. Other structures, like the ODKB, are playing a greater integrative role (ura.news/articles/1036283267).

            “I don’t see in the rhetoric or Putin and other leaders any indication that they want to somehow strengthen the CIS,” the Belarusian commentator says. Putin would be the last person to want to do away with this organization given Russian dominance there, but he too understands that real integrative processes will take place elsewhere. The CIS in that sense is a talk shop.

            Dmitry Zhuravlyev, head of the Moscow Institute for Regional Problems, is even more blunt. He says that the members of the CIS have “already lost interest” in the organization. It was “important in the 1990s when there was still a common currency and Soviet passports. Now, each country has its own independence, above all from Russia.”

            Consequently, he doesn’t expect the CIS to increase in importance although he too seems certain that it won’t disappear. It will simply be marginalized by Moscow’s other integrative programs and by the disinterest of the non-Russian members in giving Moscow yet another way of imposing its interests on them.