Putin: CIS to be preserved as full-fledged international organization

National leaders of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) want to preserve the union of post-Soviet states as a full-fledged international organization, Russian President Vladimir Putin said Saturday, Sputnik reports.

CIS leaders met in Kyrgyzstan’s Bishkek this week for a summit which ended in a joint declaration.

"We approached the 25th anniversary with basically the same intention – and this is the main result, in my opinion, – to preserve the CIS as a full-fledged international organization," Putin said in Bishkek.

"It is everyone’s opinion that parallel structures are of no use. Everything that is in the way of progress, that creates red tape…must be transformed to suit concrete tasks," he continued.