President Putin promulgated his decree before Boris Yeltsin addressed a Commonwealth of Independent States summit.
The first CIS Chairman and Russia’s first President thanked the Russians for their patience, work and courage. He emphasised that Russia had been, was and would remain a great power. He expressed the hope that the next decade would mark a new stage in the Commonwealth’s development, because the independent countries were now economically stronger and the CIS’s prestige was growing in the world.