President of Russia Dmitry Medvedev: Good afternoon, colleagues.
In addition to the traditional issues that we usually consider at our regular meetings of the permanent Security Council members, today we are going to look at issues we don't normally discuss in public. We need to consider some other topics about which we have already agreed in advance, including those related to the recent Chisinau summit of the CIS member states.
The summit has demonstrated its member states' interest in the development of the Commonwealth as the only structure that unites our countries, as the only institution that facilitates the development of interstate ties within the former Soviet Union, bringing together post-Soviet states. At the same time, there is a number of problems: economic issues, the problems of interstate cooperation, our joint efforts in overcoming the consequences of the global financial crisis – our Minister of Finance gave a very good report on this, triggering some real interest on the part of individual state leaders at the summit.
There are also some bilateral issues which I thought it would be appropriate to discuss, so I suggest that at the outset we talk about our response to the CIS summit, discuss certain problems that exist in foreign economic relations and in our economic cooperation with the CIS countries in general, and submit proposals. That's why I thought it appropriate to invite to this meeting our ambassadors to a number of CIS countries, namely Ukraine and Belarus.