“We will be much less involved in political aspects of cooperation, it is more within the purview of the Ministry for Foreign Affairs, where the relevant agency is in place, headed by Konstantin Kosachev (Rossotrudnichestvo)”, said Head of Department Yuri Voronin, former Deputy Head of the Ministry of Health and Social Security.

The Department’s approach will be “multi-faceted – both economic and social cooperation: it is hard to prioritize one over the other”.

According to Voronin, the Department aims to “bring about concrete cooperation in actual, mainly social and focused economic efforts by the CIS countries”.

The newspaper notes that CIS cooperation was previously handled by the Foreign Policy Department of the Presidential Executive Office as well as the Inter-regional and Cultural Cooperation Department.

The new Department, overseen by Presidential Aide and ex-Head of Ministry of Health and Social Security Tatiana Golikova, will have equal authority to the former two bodies.

The Department will work towards “aiding the CIS states in developing effective civil society institutions, a modern financial and pension infrastructure and in harmonizing social security systems”, according to Voronin.

Moscow “focuses on concrete humanitarian projects”, said Head of Department.

Speaking about Abkhazia and South Ossetia, Voronin stated that “any state’s coming-of-age is measured by the level of social guarantees, and Russia’s mission is in helping these two republics raise the standard of living, make the modern benefits of civilization fully available to the people”.

Among the projects, Voronin named a unified CIS pension system, enabling people to use their pension rights equally in any CIS state.

The Department will also “contribute to social legislation” in Russia. All projects forwarded to the President are assessed by various Executive Office groups, said Voronin. His Department will therefore “definitely provide expert opinion on these projects”. “Anyway, this will be a sideline for us”, he said.

Project Group №4