Ukraine continues to dismantle int'l treaty framework in relations with CIS, Russia, Belarus

MOSCOW. Jan 13 (Interfax) - The Ukrainian government has approved Kiev's withdrawal from the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) agreement on visits to soldiers' graves and military monuments to Great Patriotic War veterans.

The government adopted this decision at a meeting on January 7, Ukrainian media cited the government's representative to the Verkhovna Rada Taras Melnichuk as saying.

In particular, Ukraine has quit the agreement signed in Moscow on October 18, 1996 on behalf of the CIS member countries' governments to facilitate visits to military personnel graves and military monuments commemorating Great Patriotic War veterans and citizens with equal status.

It was also reported that Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky has submitted a bill to parliament to terminate 15 international private law treaties with Russia and ten with Belarus.

"The bill [...] proposes terminating a number of international treaties signed with Russia and Belarus as part of the Hague Conference on International Private Law, the Council of Europe and the UN, as well as a bilateral treaty between Ukraine and Belarus on the extradition of convicted persons to allow them serve their sentences in the respective country," an explanatory note to the president-proposed bill, registered in the Verkhovna Rada on Monday, January 6, said.

These documents include the Convention on the Service Abroad of Judicial and Extrajudicial Documents, the Convention on the Taking of Evidence Abroad in Civil or Commercial Matters, the Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction, the European Convention on Extradition, the European Convention on Mutual Assistance in Criminal Matters, the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime, and the United Nations Convention against Corruption.