Before you read this article, try hard to click on "Attention" to facilitate your discussion and sharing, but also give you a different sense of involvement, thank you for your support!
Editor | L.Y.
Preliminary
In the national palace in Dushanbe, Tajikistan, the atmosphere is solemn and stable. This moderate sense of ceremony has become one of the symbols of the Independent Nations Union (CIS) summit. In the marble hall, the national flag hangs high, and members of the delegation wander in quiet discussions. When the leaders of the CIS gather together, the front doors of the cameras hang out, recording each critical moment.
At 9 a.m. on October 10, the official opening of the Council of Heads of State of the CIS, with a large number of leaders from nine countries, including Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, was the organization’s second primary meeting in 2025. The most remarkable resolution of the meeting was to pass the cooperation mechanism “CIS+” and grant the status of observer to the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, which was unanimously voted by the member states, President of Tajikistan Rahmon said in his speech, “This is a historic step to break through the territorial boundaries of the CIS”.
In his speech on the same day, Putin explained the logic of this arrangement in detail: “The CIS should not stop collaborating in the post-Soviet space, but should become the ‘connector’ of Eurasian integration.” He revealed that Russia’s trade with Central Asian countries has exceeded $45 billion, on this basis, by linking with the SCO, the radius of cooperation can be extended to South Asia, East Asia and the Middle East.
Not all post-Soviet countries agreed to this shift. Although Moldova did not withdraw from the CIS, for the third consecutive absence, its CIS observers said in a statement after the meeting that “the focus was prioritized on the process of European integration”; while Ukraine completely discontinued all CIS mechanical activities from 2023 and retained only a portion of the humanitarian agreement framework. This internal difference did not affect the process of the meeting, but highlighted the clear intention of the Russian-led CIS to “de-Sovietize” and shift to Eurasian cooperation.
Joint Statement to October Mechanism Link
In the early morning of March 15, 2025, the three heads of state of China and Russia signed the Joint Statement on safeguarding international justice and security cooperation, announced the launch of deep connections in the three major fields of energy, finance and military, and presented the idea of "relying on multilateral mechanisms to build a network of Eurasian cooperation". This concept found a concrete endpoint at the CIS summit in October - the SCO as a core multilateral platform covering China and Russia, after obtaining the status of an observer, can directly participate in the CIS energy and security discussions.
Energy cooperation has become the core of convergence. On May 8, China and Russia signed more than 20 cooperation documents in Moscow. Putin clearly promised that "Russia will provide as much oil as China needs." The "Power of Siberia" natural gas pipeline has reached the annual gas supply target of 38 billion cubic meters ahead of schedule. The new Far East pipeline is planned to increase its gas supply by another 10 billion cubic meters after it is put into operation in 2027. According to the Sino-Russian-Iranian joint statement in March, Iran has opened all oil and gas field exploration rights to China and Russia, and the de-dollarization ratio of oil trade among the three countries has exceeded 60%. The average daily trading volume of RMB-denominated crude oil futures on the Russian Energy Exchange has reached 3 million barrels.
The CIS and the SCO mechanisms are linked to make this energy network more resilient.The meeting of October 10 clarified that the “Eurasia Energy Stability Network” under the CIS framework will be linked to the SCO’s cross-border energy channel plan, the Zhejiang Railway as a key hub project, the plan in 2028, will connect China Kashch and Uzbekistan to the Arctic navigation route to form a “land and sea double channel”, reducing China’s reliance on traditional maritime channels by 18%.
The Transition from Observation to Deep Participation
As a member of the SCO, India hasined its perspective on CIS and SCO cooperation, and until after the CIS summit in June, India’s ambassador to Russia was present for the first time in the CIS outskirts. During the October summit, India did not send representatives directly, but submitted a written statement through the SCO Secretariat expressing its support for the “CIS + SCO” energy cooperation initiative.
This shift is driven by economic benefits.In 2024, India’s oil imports from Russia accounted for 25% of Russia’s total energy exports, becoming Russia’s second-largest buyer of energy, while Iran is India’s third-largest source of liquefied natural gas.With the CIS and SCO mechanisms linked, India gained more stable energy security ——In October 11, India Petroleum and Gas Corporation announced a new agreement with Russia’s Gas Industry Corporation to increase Russia’s gas supply to India from 5 billion cubic meters annually to 12 billion cubic meters, extending the contract to 2035.
More crucial is the synergy of the settlement system. The China-Russia-led “oil yuan-rouble-rial” settlement mechanism, which has covered 92% of the three-country energy trade, while India announced in August that it will include the rupee in this settlement framework, allowing the BRICS New Development Bank’s $65 billion special loan to directly support India’s energy infrastructure projects. This bonding of finance and energy has made India an integral part of Russia’s Eurasian layout, and also indicates that the CIS has broken the “post-Soviet” label, becoming a platform for cross-regional cooperation.
Transition from ignorance to passive response.
The underestimation of Putin's layout in the United States has laid the groundwork for changes in the geopolitical pattern. At the beginning of the year, the Eurasian Strategic Assessment Report released by the US State Department still regarded the CIS as a "loose organization lacking vitality" and believed that Russia was "unable to integrate the post-Soviet space, and it was even more difficult to radiate China, India and Iraq". It was not until the announcement of the resolution of the CIS summit on October 10th that the White House convened an emergency inter-departmental meeting to assess the impact of the situation.
This misjudgment stems from the lag of cognition of the transformation of CIS. The United States has previously focused on the consumption of Russia by the Russia-Ukraine conflict, but ignored its efforts to break through multilateral mechanisms: in 2024, China, Russia and Iran held the "Security Tie-2024" joint military exercise in the Persian Gulf, and China's 055 destroyer entered Hormuz for the first time. Strait; In March 2025, the three countries launched a settlement system independent of SWIFT, and the digital renminbi has covered 86% of energy transactions. These actions have been gradually promoted under the framework of CIS and Shanghai Cooperation, but they have not been included in the core strategic considerations of the United States.
conclusion
Passive response is already emerging. On October 12, U.S. Secretary of State Blinken called Indian Foreign Minister Sujsen, trying to persuade India to distance itself from China-Russia-Iran energy cooperation with preferential terms of the "Indo-Pacific Economic Framework", but received no clear response. On the same day, the U.S. Treasury Department announced new sanctions on Russian energy companies. However, because the three countries have established a blockchain settlement platform, the effect of the sanctions has been greatly reduced. This platform has shortened the transaction dispute resolution cycle from 90 days to 7 days, successfully hedging the impact of a trillion dollar asset freeze. The US "Foreign Policy" magazine commented that "Putin is disintegrating the US-led 'dollar-oil-NATO' system through the Eurasian network formed by the CIS."
Reference source: