Russian president Vladimir Putin proposed to grant observer status to the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) in the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO). He voiced this proposal at the 20th anniversary CSTO summit, the Kremlin press service reported.
“We should build up interaction with our natural partners in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and the Commonwealth of Independent States. By the way, in our opinion, it would be appropriate and correct - we have to discuss this - to provide the CIS with the status of an observer at the CSTO," the president said.
This proposal was discussed before. In May 2020, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said that the CSTO had "a consensus on granting observer status to the SCO and the CIS in it." In February of this year, Leonid Anfimov, First Deputy Chairman of the CIS Executive Committee, said that the Commonwealth plans to obtain observer status in the CSTO.
At the summit, the Russian president said that the goal of US biological laboratories in the post-Soviet space is "to collect biological materials and study the specifics of the spread of viruses."
