the commonwealth of independent states has always been something of a bogus organization. wiki charitably calls it a "very loose association of states and in no way comparable to a federation, confederation or supra-national organisation such as the old European Community." i've come to think of it as a pretend organization, designed by russian in the hopes of maintaining its domination of its former soviet republic client states. up until now, the CIS as an organization didn't do anything other than resolving to do stuff in the future that it never ended up actually doing (e.g. forming the CISFTA).
at least that's how they rolled until now. i guess the necessity of silencing critics is something that all those autocratic regimes can finally agree upon.
