None other than Russia assumed all obligations on national debts as the Soviet Union collapsed, and it is true to those obligations. "It is quite possible now, considering the current market situation, to regard possibilities for writing off the debts of Russia's closest neighbors to it. We are ready to help," he said in a RIA Novosti interview.
Russian assistance can concern many fields. Thus, the Russian business community has long established itself in all other countries of the CIS, or Commonwealth of Independent States. "Long-term investment buttressed by government guarantees can provide a basis for CIS countries' economic progress, and that will be investment in the manufacturing economic sector."
Ishchuk regards Russia as the only post-Soviet country that can be considered a genuinely independent, self-sufficient state. "I mean not only its raw material basis but the opportunity to protect its interests with no need for armed support from without." All the other CIS countries have no such opportunity. "They can certainly hope for NATO to help-but they will have to take stock of how dear they will have to pay for such help."
It is high time now to finally determine CIS reform blueprints. "A long-term and constructive Commonwealth reform must include, among other matters, bringing administrative structures within the Commonwealth into order." As our interviewee sees it, the CIS must decide which of those institutions are of use now, and which have coped with their tasks and are now merely hampering further progress. "The surviving Commonwealth structures are to be entitled to the right to offer initiatives on forming the CIS normative basis, including international treaties and legislative acts."
The development of contacts between CIS countries ought to be more practical than it is now, Senator Ishchuk remarked. As he sees it, not only those countries' Foreign Ministers ought to determine the fields of further efforts but also top officers of the key blocks-military-political, economic and cultural. "Naturally, to coordinate these vast efforts, it would be reasonable to appoint a responsible leader in a rank comparable to a Deputy Prime Minister's," he said.
