Русский
Russia’s trade with members of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) exceeded $110 billion in 2025 and continued to grow this year, Russian President Vladimir Putin has said. He was speaking at the Heads of State meetings of the CIS countries in Turkmenistan.
Putin said that “the trade turnover between Russia and CIS members topped US$110 billion in 2025. It grew another 19% in the first half of this year. The CIS can achieve much more, should it choose to lift trade barriers. Can we progress even faster? Perhaps we can. What should we do? Barriers should be lifted. The heads of state are doing practical work, but restrictions are imposed sometimes at the national level. We are intentionally slowing the pace ourselves.”
The CIS includes the following members: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan.
It differs from the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) in that as a loose trade bloc, it relies on bilateral trade agreements between the respective members as opposed to a unified agreement amongst all. Where certain specific trade items are not included in these bilateral agreements, WTO rules apply. Putin’s suggestion is to remove those and ultimately appears to suggest the CIS should become a more formal trade bloc. If that happened, it would include all EAEU members in any event.
The 19% growth in H1 2026 trade, if maintained during the rest of the year, would imply an overall CIS trade turnover of US$130.1 billion for the full year.
