MOSCOW, January 1. /TASS/. In 2023, Kazakhstan is passing the chairmanship of the CIS to Kyrgyzstan.

The republic’s President Sadyr Japarov vowed that, as chairman, his country will pay special attention to bolstering good-neighborly relations and trust between CIS member states.

The decision on Bishkek’s chairmanship was made on October 14 at a CIS summit in Astana. Russia and Kazakhstan will be co-chairing.

Year's goals and tasks

At the Astana summit, Japarov noted that it is important to make efforts to support and develop partner interactions between CIS countries along such directions as transportation, communications, migration policy, cultural and humanitarian cooperation and the implementation of international initiatives and interstate programs.

He vowed that during its chairmanship, the Kyrgyz side will “invariably pay special attention to the boosting of good-neighborly and trusting relations between member states based on respecting mutual interests with expanding and deepening interaction of multilevel integration structures in the CIS’ space.”

Additionally, the Kyrgyz leader stressed that his country adheres to an invariable stance on the necessity to resolve disputes in an exclusively peaceful and political-diplomatic way.

What to expect?

Stanislav Pritchin, a researcher at the Center for Post-Soviet Studies at IMEMO, told a TASS correspondent that it is difficult to expect anything from Kyrgyzstan’s CIS chairmanship because the republic “is usually not a very active player in such projects and largely follows the agenda of more substantial participants.”

Overall, speaking about the CIS chairmanship next year, Pritchin noted that the alliance will retain its importance in transnational cooperation, particularly for Russia. “There is the Ukrainian crisis and the tense situation around the special military operation, few states are ready to work with Russia within the framework of the CSTO or of the EAEU, so the CIS venue still retains very important socio-economic and socio-humanitarian tasks and goals which are important to us to be implemented through cooperation,” he explained.