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Kiev exits post-Soviet CIS agreement on WMDs

The agreement was signed in Minsk and came into force on June 26, 1992

© REUTERS/Valentyn Ogirenko

KIEV, August 21. /TASS/. Ukraine has officially withdrawn from the Commonwealth of Independent States (regional organization comprising ten post-Soviet republics, CIS) agreement on the coordination of work related to the issues of export control over raw materials, materials, equipment, technologies, and services used or capable of being used for the manufacture of weapons of mass destruction and missiles as their means of delivery. The Ukrainian government made this decision on Wednesday.

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The agreement was signed in Minsk and came into force on June 26, 1992. It stipulates that the CIS members cooperate in these spheres, as well as establish national systems of export control in their respective countries. The member states agreed to pursue coordinated export control policies, including the application of sanctions against all economic entities that violate the export control requirements.

The Ukrainian cabinet of ministers have already terminated a number of agreements in the last few years, inked in the CIS framework, saying that these agreements are incompatible with Kiev’s obligations assumed under the EU association agreement to justify their actions. The Ukrainian leadership that rose to power in the aftermath of the 2014 coup d’etat immediately declared that the process of withdrawing from the CIS had begun. Later, then-President Pyotr Poroshenko signed the executive order to ultimately terminate Ukraine’s participation in the CIS statutory bodies, all contacts are carried out via the Ukrainian embassy in Minsk.

At the same time, spokeswoman for the Russian Foreign Ministry Maria Zakharova said that the CIS Executive Committee had not received any official notifications about Ukraine’s withdrawal in spite of repeated statements made by Kiev that the country intended to sever ties with the organization. She concluded that "Ukraine de jure remains a full-fledged member of the CIS" and Kiev is regularly invited to meetings of the supreme statutory bodies and is informed about their outcomes.

Currently, Kiev has exited 16 international CIS agreements, while it remains a party to 211 such agreements.

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