{"id":1785,"date":"2020-12-10T14:47:31","date_gmt":"2020-12-10T14:47:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.radiofree.org\/?p=137106"},"modified":"2020-12-10T14:47:31","modified_gmt":"2020-12-10T14:47:31","slug":"cis-foreign-ministers-approve-draft-on-closer-military-covid-19-cooperation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2020\/12\/10\/cis-foreign-ministers-approve-draft-on-closer-military-covid-19-cooperation\/","title":{"rendered":"CIS Foreign Ministers Approve Draft On Closer Military, COVID-19 Cooperation"},"content":{"rendered":"
Foreign Ministers of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) have approved a draft concept on further developing cooperation in several areas, including the coronavirus pandemic.<\/p>\n
The Kazakh Foreign Ministry said in a statement that ministers approved a number of documents at the December 10 meeting, including a concept of military cooperation between CIS member states to 2025.<\/p>\n
It added that the Council of the CIS leaders will be held online on December 18.<\/p>\n
“The participants discussed a wide range of integration cooperation issues within the CIS, with a special emphasis on joint actions to overcome the negative effects of the coronavirus pandemic,” the Russian Foreign Ministry said after the meeting.<\/p>\n
CIS members are former Soviet republics — Azerbaijan, Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Russia, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan. Turkmenistan has an associate status in the grouping.<\/p>\n
Ukraine quit the grouping in 2018, four years after Russia forcibly annexed Ukraine\u2019s Crimea region in March 2014 and started backing separatists in Ukraine\u2019s east in a conflict that has killed more than 13,200 people since April 2014.<\/p>\n
Ukraine was an associate member of the CIS since the grouping was established following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.<\/p>\n
Earlier, in 2009, another former Soviet republic, Georgia, quit the CIS following a five-day Russian-Georgian war in August 2008, after which Russia has maintained troops in Georgia’s breakaway regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia and recognized their independence from Tbilisi.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n