Translated material
Small "eight"
Russia continued its month of summits
Vladimir Putin gathered two “eight” presidents last week. Following the “big one,” another, smaller, CIS leader gathered. And if the first, the one that took place in Strelna near St. Petersburg, will be dedicated to the museum that is already opening in the Konstantinovsky Palace (the main exhibit there will be Putin’s old lottery winnings, his old but now brilliant “Zaporozhets”), then the second, Moscow, will remain captured in history except a copy of a sculpture by the famous Lanceray.His horse, under saddle with a jockey, plodding along, was awarded the prize of the President of Russia to the winner of the race at the Moscow Hippodrome. This celebration was supposed to be the main decoration of the two-day informal CIS summit, which ended on Saturday.
Of course, the eight presidents of the Commonwealth turned out to be the result of embarrassment. There were to be as many of them as the horses competing in the main 2000m race for stallions and mares aged three years and over. That is, twelve, a number that has long been considered a symbol of harmony, coinciding with the number of countries that are formally members of the CIS. And even though Turkmenistan has not considered itself in this capacity for a long time, no one has been waiting for Turkmenbashi’s arrival at the summit for a long time. And even if Ukraine, which has never signed the CIS charter, is considered only an associated member of the Commonwealth. No one has been paying attention to these formalities for a long time, since the CIS is a structure so informal that it is not even able to die. Despite the fact that, as the current head of the CIS of Kazakhstan, Nursultan Nazarbayev, noted on July 22, “of the 1,600 documents adopted over the entire period of its existence, about 10% work” and “everyone knows that the CIS states are dissatisfied with its work, and some are very dissatisfied.”
These latter, as is known, include Georgia and Moldova. To a lesser extent - Ukraine, since it has not been noted for any participation in CIS structures. Of the leaders of the “problematic” trio, only the President of Moldova, Vladimir Voronin, came to Moscow. Mikheil Saakashvili and Viktor Yushchenko stayed at home - they were not interested in discussing the main topic of the summit, the future reform of the CIS, and the Kremlin did not promise them a personal meeting with Putin.
But the President of Moldova, Vladimir Voronin, arrived in an extremely good mood, which was noted by everyone who witnessed the informal dinner on July 21 at the Prichal restaurant on the banks of the Moscow River. Mr. Voronin not only amused everyone by telling tragicomic stories, but also allowed everyone to joke about himself. Alexander Lukashenko was especially distinguished, blaming Voronin for not taking Moldovan wine with him, saying that everyone here would have tasted it together. It is worth noting that in the “Prichal” they found a worthy replacement in the form of selected varieties of French and Italian wine with brand new Russian excise stamps, which went well with sophisticatedly prepared dishes of Russian cuisine, herring with onions and potatoes, spit-roasted veal, juicy fillet of young lamb, as well as other delicacies.
As for Mr. Voronin, he really didn’t take any wine with him, as he admitted in an interview with Ekho Moskvy: “During the six years of my work as president, I came to Moscow without a single bottle of wine or cognac - simply as a sign of protest... “The protest of the Moldovan president, according to him, is explained, in particular, by the fact that the decision to ban the import of Moldovan wine into Russia was not accompanied by a single claim formalized in writing by Moscow. But Voronin, nevertheless, not hoping for a separate meeting with Putin, hoped to ask him “a whole series of questions” in Moscow. And in order to create a favorable background for this, Voronin took to Moscow the decision of the Moldovan parliament to remove the issue of the country’s exit from the CIS from discussion. However, the Moldovan president does not hide that for Chisinau, relations with the CIS are, first of all, relations with Russia. And therefore, participation in CIS summits is an opportunity to meet with Putin, which in the current situation it would be reckless to deprive of...
This suggests that the CIS summits, the more they look like organized collective trips to meet with the owner of the Kremlin in the hope of resolving bilateral - sensitive or not so - issues with him. Or ask him to act as a “settler” in relations with neighbors in the CIS. Or enlist his support in the upcoming elections...
This time, Armenian President Robert Kocharyan did not take advantage of this opportunity, which was guaranteed. He was the only one who was promised a bilateral meeting with the Russian President. In Yerevan, this is explained by Mr. Kocharyan’s sudden flu, which he caught on the eve of the summit while relaxing on Lake Sevan, which led to a temporary loss of voice. Those who allowed themselves to assume that the Armenian president had “diplomatic flu” were called “false analysts” by Defense Minister Serge Sargsyan.
But Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev came to Moscow and did not regret it, although he did not meet with Putin separately. After all, Putin’s prize at the races went to the black stallion Eshkiya from Azerbaijan, who came to a head-to-head photo finish with the Russian bay Satellite. And who knows, the Armenian stallion Hayest Laver would not have been next to the Azerbaijani in the place of Satellite if the President of Armenia had been cheering for him not at home, but at the hippodrome...
As a result, the only president of the Commonwealth countries who was awarded a separate meeting with the owner of the horse race was the head of Tajikistan, Emomali Rakhmonov. This was their second rendezvous in the last two months; more often Putin sees only Nursultan Nazarbayev. However, between these meetings, most recently, US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld visited Dushanbe. The head of the Pentagon was so impressed with its results that, upon returning home, he sent an “Open Letter to the People of Tajikistan”, in which, among other things, he noted that “the United States looks forward to expanding our cooperation in many areas in the coming years.” Obviously, these “areas” may also include the military. And Dushanbe, as a member of the CIS Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) still loyal to Moscow, was supposed to inform its main ally about cooperation with Washington. It is worth noting that Americans have recently especially singled out Tajikistan among the countries of Central Asia, also promising it various preferences in the field of energy, assistance to small businesses and entrepreneurship. The attention is seen in Dushanbe as clear US support for Mr Rakhmonov, who is preparing for re-election in Tajikistan's upcoming presidential elections in November. It would also be quite useful for Rakhmonov to secure Putin’s support.
On the main issue of the summit - the prospects for reforming the CIS - a “Solomon decision” was made. The main “integrator” of the post-Soviet space, the President of Kazakhstan Nursultan Nazarbayev, was appointed responsible for this. Prefacing his proposals, he, as a veteran of the CIS since 1991, along with his Uzbek colleague Islam Karimov, remembered with an unkind word those who “invented” the Commonwealth, members of the first Yeltsin team, Burbulis, Shakhrai and Kozyrev. Having voiced these names for the first time in this context, Nazarbayev reproached them for the fact that “there was a misunderstanding in the very concepts of the “commonwealth”,” since the example was taken from the British Commonwealth. At the same time, according to Nazarbayev, no one paid attention to the fact that in the British Commonwealth states communicate differently. The CIS members meant, Nazarbayev said, that by forming the Commonwealth, they would be able to leave behind the economic, transport, and defense ties that existed under the USSR.
Now, “studying and analyzing, I settled on five schemes” for cooperation in the CIS, the Kazakh president summed up: “migration policy, transport, educational system, issues with today’s challenges and a humanitarian problem.” During the summit, he said, two more areas were proposed - “common approaches to international issues and a common space regarding defense policy.” At the same time, the speaker noted, “decisions must be made by consensus and must be binding on everyone.”
But it is impossible to imagine that under such conditions the new CIS will simultaneously include Armenia and Azerbaijan, Moldova and Ukraine, and even Georgia and Turkmenistan. Consequently, the scheme proposed by Mr. Nazarbayev, at best, intends to legitimize the existence of the CSTO, uniting Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan and, de facto, Uzbekistan as the legal successor of the current CIS. The countries that are part of GUAM and Turkmenistan will be left out. That is, the configuration that already exists in the post-Soviet space will be consolidated.
It is remarkable that the author of such a point in the history of the CIS will not be Putin, but Nazarbayev, who publicly buried the Commonwealth a couple of years ago in Moscow. But there are no complaints about Moscow itself. If you want regular meetings in the Kremlin, stay with us on our terms. In a word, we will talk about this in Minsk in the fall, at the next CIS summit. The current one, 41st, is not the last one yet.