Remember the Date: 8 December 1991 - the end of the Soviet Union

posted 8 Dec 2016, 03:03 by Rights in Russia   [ updated 8 Dec 2016, 03:12 ]
On 8 December 1991, the leaders of Russia (Boris Yeltsin), Ukraine(Leonid Kravchuk), and Belarus (Stanislav Shushkevich) signed an agreement at the Belavezha nature reserve in Belarus - the Belavezha Accords - stating that 'the USSR has ceased to exist as an entity of international law and geopolitical reality' and estalblishing the Commonwealth of Independent States in its place.

Photo: By RIA Novosti archive, image #848095 / U. Ivanov / CC-BY-SA 3.0, CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikipedia 

Sources:
Peter Rutland, 'History in the Making: The Agreement That Ended the Soviet Union. The Belavezha accords, signed twenty five years ago, changed the shape of world history,' The Moscow Times, 7 December 2016
Amos Chapple, 'End Of An Empire' (Photo Blog), RFE/RL, 7 December 2016
Paul Goble, 'Belavezha Accords didn’t destroy the USSR: it had already ceased to exist, Shtepa says,' Euromaidan Press, 30 November 2016
Belavezha Accords, Wikipedia
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