Russia invites Ukrainian Foreign Minister Klimkin to CIS Foreign Ministers Council in Moscow
Russia’s permanent representative for the statutory and other Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) bodies, Andrey Grozov, announced that the Russian Federation has officially invited Ukraine to participate in the meeting of the CIS Foreign Ministers Council in Moscow, which will take place on April 5, reports TASS.
“The Russian Federation has sent the Foreign Ministry of Ukraine an official Sergey Lavrov’s invitation for the foreign minister Pavlo Klimkin to attend the Council of Foreign Ministers meeting. There has been no response to this invitation yet,” noted Russia’s permanent representative.
The invitation was sent to Ukraine “in advance in early March”, said Grozov."We sent invitations to all foreign ministers of the CIS member states," he specified.
Ukraine, which has never ratified the CIS Charter of 1993, is in the Commonwealth, but does not pay membership dues and has reduced its cooperation within the CIS framework to a minimum.
In May 2018, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko signed a decree that enforced the National Security Council’s decision on the final termination of Ukraine’s participation in the CIS statutory bodies work. This also includes the closure of Ukraine’s permanent representative mission in this organization.
According to Poroshenko, Kyiv will conduct an audit of all the international treaties concluded within the framework of the CIS, and withdraw from the agreements that do not comply with the national interests of Ukraine.
At the beginning of 2019, Ukraine withdrew from the obsolete CIS treaty of planned economy. It also terminated three more contracts: the Interstate Exchange of Economic Information Agreement of June 26, 1992; the Information Exchange in the Foreign Economic Activity Branch Agreement of September 24, 1993; and the Cooperation in the Field of Foreign Economic Activity Agreement of May 15, 1992.