"You know my attitude toward the fall of the Soviet Union. It was totally unnecessary. The reforms, including the ones of democratic nature, could had been carried out without it," Putin said at a meeting with party leaders.
On December 8, 1991, the leaders of Russian, Belarusian and Ukrainian Socialist Republics signed an agreement in the governmental residence of Viskuli in Belovezhskaya Pushcha, Belarus. This agreement declared the Soviet Union to be dissolved and terminated the work of the Soviet Union government from that moment forward, ending the possibility of a confederation agreement and proclaiming the creation of the Commonwealth of Independent States.
The December agreement had been preceded by a set of developments in the Soviet economic, political and cultural life. Despite the fact that the developments resulted to democratization and liberalization in the Soviet Union, they had also led to deepening contradictions between the Russian Soviet Federal Socialist Republic and other USSR member states, struggling for independence.