MINSK, January 19. /TASS/. The collective West has itself forced member states of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) to fortify cooperation, CIS Secretary General Sergey Lebedev said.

"Now we are forced to step up cooperation, for which there are both historical prerequisites and objective necessity, but the collective West has itself made us step up cooperation, pool our efforts," he said in an interview with Mir-24 TV channel.

This first of all concerns Russia and Belarus, "which turned out the most exposed to those ungrounded, illegal sanctions," Lebedev noted. "Those sanctions, this terrible pressure violating all norms of international law resulted in our efforts combined and economic difficulties overcome," he stressed.

"The numbers tell the stories best: after sanctions were imposed trade turnover between CIS countries rose by around <…> 30%," the bloc’s chief said, adding that cooperation between CIS members in the innovation area intensified in the first place.