The meeting follows on from the meeting of the heads of government of the countries of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) international organization at the end of September, which took place in Minsk, Belarus.
The Russian head of state traveled to Tajikistan on October 8 for a three-day state visit. He will hold talks with his counterpart Emomali Rahmon and representatives of other countries that were part of the Soviet Union (USSR).
Putin is accompanied by Russian Defense Minister Andrei Belousov, who visited a Russian military base in Tajikistan on Wednesday.
Rakhmon has been in power for 33 years and is the longest-ruling of all post-Soviet leaders. Putin, who turned 73 on October 7, has been ruling Russia for a quarter of a century. After the bilateral talks in Dushanbe, both will attend the Central Asia-Russia summit, which will also be attended by the heads of state of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan.
According to Reuters, Putin will seek to strengthen relations with the Central Asian states and prevent a recurrence of periodic instability in the region, which could be caused by border disputes or internal conflicts between rival groups.
It should be remembered that after the collapse of the USSR in 1991, Tajikistan was ravaged by a five-year civil war in which tens of thousands of people lost their lives.
On October 10, the highest representatives of Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Belarus will join them for an expanded meeting of the CIS, which brings together most of the former republics of the Soviet Union.
According to the TASS agency, Putin last met with Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev in October a year ago, and in September they met briefly during the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit in China.
International Court of Justice
Relations between Moscow and Baku cooled after an Azerbaijan Airlines Embraer 190 civilian aircraft was shot down shortly before its scheduled landing at Grozny airport in December last year.
The plane later crashed during an emergency landing attempt near the city of Aktau in Kazakhstan, killing at least 38 passengers. Aliyev blamed Russia for the shooting down, and Putin apologized at the time for the “tragic incident” but did not accept responsibility.
Earlier this summer, Baku protested the deaths of two Azerbaijani citizens during a police raid in the Russian city of Yekaterinburg, while Moscow criticized the arrest of three Russian journalists in Azerbaijan.
On September 9, according to Reuters, Putin told Aliyev that two Russian missiles had exploded next to an Azerbaijan Airlines plane after Ukrainian drones entered Russian airspace. At the same time, he promised compensation for all those affected by the incident.
Tajikistan is a member of the International Criminal Court, which issued an arrest warrant for Putin in 2023 for crimes committed during the war in Ukraine. The human rights organization Human Rights Watch called on Tajikistan on Wednesday to arrest Putin, warning that failure to do so would show “utter disregard for the suffering of the victims of Russian forces' crimes in Ukraine.”
However, in a country dependent on close political, economic, and military ties with Russia, the Kremlin leader faces no threat of arrest, the AP noted.
New format
About twenty different topics will be discussed at the CIS summit. The main goal of the meeting is to strengthen the organization's international standing—for example, by creating a new “CIS plus” format or granting observer status to the Shanghai Cooperation Organization.
Among others, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko also praised the initiative to take the CIS to a new level: “Belarus welcomes the initiative of our Kazakh colleagues to create the ‘CIS plus’ format as a new platform for multilateral cooperation between the member states of the community and international partners.”
About a year ago, Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev presented the “CIS plus” initiative at the CIS summit in Moscow. In his opinion, this new format should serve as a basis for expanding and strengthening regional relations between member states.
Participants will also address security issues, including energy and border protection. Discussions on combating cross-border crime and deepening cooperation in the field of defense are also on the agenda. Following the summit, several international documents are expected to be adopted, including a document on joint measures against extremism.