🗓 On October 7, Russia's Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov chaired a regular meeting of the #CIS Council of Foreign Ministers held in Moscow.

The Ministers summed up the results of the Commonwealth foreign ministries’ joint work in view of implementing the priorities of the Russian chairmanship in 2024. A wide range of issues related to CIS format interaction were discussed.

Sergey Lavrov informed Russia’s partners about its approaches to the topical international and regional topics, including the developments in the Middle East and the crisis around Ukraine.

📃 Statements by the CIS Foreign Ministers on the principles of cooperation in ensuring security in Eurasia, the unacceptability of using unilateral restrictive measures in international relations, and on cooperation in the field of fitness and sports were adopted. The 2025 schedule of multi-level consultations between the CIS foreign ministries within the Commonwealth was approved. The status of CIS basic institutions has been assigned to a number of Russian and Belarusian institutes and universities specialising in training personnel in mass communications, legal advocacy and volunteer movements, as well as in the field of countering terrorism and extremism.

Most of the documents considered by the ministers will be submitted for approval to the Council of CIS Heads of State on October 8, 2024. These include draft addresses of the CIS Heads of State to the Commonwealth nations and the world community on the 80th anniversary of the Victory of the Soviet people in the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945, a 2025-2027 cooperation programme in de-radicalisation, and a decision on determining the cultural capitals of the Commonwealth for the coming three years, among others.

ℹ️ The next meeting of the Council of CIS Foreign Ministers will be held on April 11, 2025 in the Republic of Kazakhstan.

⚡️ Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova’s comment on Kiev regime using and planning to use chemical weapons

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Detailed information about the Kiev regime’s mass-scale use of warfare chemical agents in violation of its commitments under the CWC, as well as provocations staged by Kiev and its Western backers to falsely accuse the Russian Armed Forces of similar actions, has been regularly shared with the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), the UN Security Council, and the UN General Assembly since February 2022.

Despite irrefutable evidence provided by Russia, Ukrainian armed formations continue to use toxic chemicals (chlorine, ammonia, ammonium nitrate, and sulfuric acid) against Russian military units, civilians, and local administration officials. These include substances listed under CWC schedules 2 (BZ) and 3 (chloropicrin) and the RCAs.

This behaviour is enabled by political backing and approval coming from Washington, Berlin, London, and Paris.

Russian experts have documented Ukraine’s violations of
- CWC provisions,
- the 1961 Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs
- the 1971 Convention on Psychotropic Substances.

Ukrainian armed formations also pose an environmental threat to chemical plants in the Donetsk and Lugansk people’s republics, and the Sumy, Kharkov, and Odessa regions.

The "collective West" has created an atmosphere of impunity that emboldens the Kiev regime as it proceeds to perpetrate larger-scale crimes involving toxic chemicals.

⚠️ We have credible information that, with Western support, Ukraine plans to stage a series of anti-Russia provocations in the special military operation zone. Preparations are underway to fabricate evidence to accuse Russia of CWC violations during combat operations.

According to Russian authorities, NATO countries delivered over 70 advanced toxic chemical detection and recording devices to Ukraine between July and September. <...> Simultaneously, Ukrainian security forces have been trained both in Ukraine and at NATO centres in methods of evidence falsification which were earlier used in Syria, the Skripal poisoning, and the alleged poisoning of Alexey Navalny. NATO countries, in part through the OPCW Technical Secretariat, are helping Ukraine build a “body of evidence” to further accuse Russia of CWC violations.

Here are the documents to back this up (available in Russian)

We take it that the fabricated “evidence” cooked up not far from the contact line will, as was previously done in Syria, be swiftly handed over to international experts for a so-called independent report accusing Moscow of chemical weapon use.

The motive behind this campaign is clear. 👉 No international legal standard will stop NATO countries from pursuing their stated goal of achieving a “strategic defeat” for Russia, especially when it involves chemical provocations under false flag, as used for long years in Syria. Moreover, Ukraine’s close ties with Islamist-affiliated terrorist groups and nationalist-extremist groups in the Middle East and Africa underscore the very real threat of “chemical” terrorism coming from Ukrainian special services.

❗️ We caution Washington and its allies against “playing with fire,” so as not to irreparably damage the CWC framework established in 1997.

🎙 Remarks by President of Russia Vladimir Putin at the expanded meeting of the CIS Heads of State (October 8, 2024)

💬 President Vladimir Putin: The Commonwealth of Independent States is developing. All the Leaders gathered here support further deepening of the Commonwealth. We can see that our joint efforts are consistently promoting the #CIS’s authority as a regional integration association.

The Commonwealth members act solely on the principles of mutual understanding, equality and neighbourliness, and successfully solve key tasks to improve our citizens’ well-being and quality of life.

It is largely through this that we have managed to preserve, and in some areas expand, the economic, social, cultural and humanitarian ties that have been developed over many years of living as part of a single state.

📈 As it has been noted numerous times today, the entire span of the CIS shows positive dynamic in macroeconomic and, indeed, economic terms. The GDP of CIS members is growing at a good pace, as trade and investment ties between them are becoming stronger.

For instance, trade between Russia and other CIS states in just seven months of this year grew by an impressive 7.7%, totaling $63.2 billion, in spite of the volatility displayed by the global markets.

Companies from CIS countries carry out mutually beneficial projects in energy, industry, and infrastructure, jointly implement import substitution programmes, as a new, national currency-based financial system impervious to external factors is being established.

Obviously, cooperation between the CIS countries is not limited to the economy. Cooperation on the cultural track, which is based on the sinvere mutual interest of our countries’ peoples in each other’s culture and traditions, is making good headway.

Next year will mark the 80th Anniversary of the Victory of the Soviet people in the Great Patriotic War. In this regard, a joint Appeal to the Commonwealth nations and the world community will be adopted following the results of our meeting. <...>

☝️ In the current difficult global situation, it is crucial that all CIS states advocate the formation of a fair world order based on universally recognised principles of international law with the pivotal role of the UN. We constantly coordinate positions on key global and regional issues, and our approaches are traditionally close or completely coincide.

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