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Belarusian President: Situation in Ukraine Affects All Post-Soviet States

© Sputnik / Sergei Guneev / Go to the mediabankThe crisis in Ukraine affects all post-Soviet states, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko said Friday.
The crisis in Ukraine affects all post-Soviet states, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko said Friday. - Sputnik International
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The crisis in Ukraine affects all post-Soviet states, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko said Friday.

Updated 1:51 p.m. Moscow Time

MINSK, October 10 (RIA Novosti) –The crisis in Ukraine affects all post-Soviet states, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko said Friday.

"This [Ukraine] is not simply a local hotbed of tension, it undermines all integration foundations on the post-Soviet space," Lukashenko said at the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) summit in the Belarusian capital, Minsk.

On Thursday, Russian presidential aide Yuri Ushakov said that the Friday CIS meeting would be attended by Ukraine's representatives, but not by Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko.

The CIS currently has nine full members - Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, and two participating states – Turkmenistan and Ukraine.

Despite the fact that Ukraine was one of the three founding states that ratified the agreement to create the CIS in 1991, it did not ratify the CIS Charter, becoming an associate member of the alliance in 1993.

Speculations about Ukraine's withdrawal from the CIS came after Crimea signed a reunification treaty with Russia on March 18. Belarus took over the CIS presidency after Kiev announced that it would abandon its post as this year's rotating head of the CIS, adding it may reconsider its membership in the organization.

Ukraine's internal crisis escalated in mid-April, when Kiev launched a military operation against independence supporters in the country's southeast, who refused to recognize the new government, which came to power following the February coup.

On September 5, a ceasefire agreement was signed by representatives of the Kiev leadership and Ukrainian independence supporters at the meeting of the Contact Group on Ukraine in Minsk.

Minsk also hosted the second meeting of the Contact Group, which took place on September 19, and led to the signing of a memorandum, specifying the ceasefire.

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