What is the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS)?
The Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) is an alliance of 12 of the 15 former Republics of the Soviet Union (Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldava, Russia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan). The headquarters of the organization is in Minsk, Belarus. The three non-members are Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania.