You're reading: Kuchma proposes to bury CIS

Ukraine's second president Leonid Kuchma (1994-2005) has said the institution of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) is irrelevant in the present conditions, though it did show positive results in the past.

"We need to summon up all our courage and say a prayer for the CIS to thank this body, which has done of lot of positive and good things. But let us look at today’s situation: all problems are addressed practically at a bilateral level," he said at the first session of a club of the CIS, Baltic and Georgian editors-in-chief, titled, "Is the CIS being transformed into a new political economic organization?" at the office of the Izvestia in Ukraine newspaper in Kyiv on Friday.