Belovezha Accords

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Agreement establishing the
Commonwealth of Independent States

The signing ceremony at Viskuli Government House
Type	Treaty establishing a loose regional organisation
Signed	8 December 1991
Location	Viskuli, Belovezh Forest, Belarus (de facto) Minsk, Minsk Oblast, Belarus (de jure)
Effective	10 December 1991 12 December 1991 23 December 1991 25 December 1991 26 December 1991 4 January 1992 6 March 1992 24 September 1993 3 December 1993 8 April 1994
Signatories	Chairman Stanislav Shushkevich Prime Minister Vyacheslav Kebich President Boris Yeltsin First Deputy Prime Minister Gennady Burbulis President Leonid Kravchuk Prime Minister Vitold Fokin
Parties	Republic of Belarus  Russian Federation (RSFSR)  Ukraine
Depositary	Republic of Belarus
Languages	Belarusian, Russian, Ukrainian

The Belovezha Accords (Belarusian: Белавежскае пагадненне, romanized: Bielaviežskaje pahadniennie, Russian: Беловежские соглашения, romanized: Belovezhskiye soglasheniya, Ukrainian: Біловезькі угоди, romanized: Bilovezʹki uhody) is the agreement declaring that the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) had effectively ceased to exist and establishing the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) in its place as a successor entity. The documentation was signed at the state dacha near Viskuli in Belovezhskaya Pushcha, Belarus on 8 December 1991, by leaders of three of the four republics (except for the defunct Transcaucasian SFSR) which had signed the 1922 Treaty on the Creation of the USSR:^[1]

• Belarusian Parliament Chairman Stanislav Shushkevich and Prime Minister of Belarus Vyacheslav Kebich
• Russian President Boris Yeltsin and First Deputy Prime Minister of the RSFSR/Russian Federation Gennady Burbulis
• Ukrainian President Leonid Kravchuk and Ukrainian Prime Minister Vitold Fokin

As Shushkevich said in 2006, by December "the union had already been broken up by the putschists" who in August 1991 tried to remove Mikhail Gorbachev from power to prevent the transformation of the Soviet Union into what Shushkevich described as "a confederation". The three wanted to avoid what happened in the breakup of Yugoslavia and "there was no other way out of the situation than a divorce."^[2]