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Initiating the dissolution of the Soviet Union in the fall of 1991 and ignoring the referendum results confirming constitutional / institutional unity of the USSR (in fact, without disclosing the referendum results to citizens of the USSR), the leaders of Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine met on December 8 in the Belovezhskaya Pushcha Natural Reserve, about 50 km (30 mi) north of Brest in Belarus, and signed an agreement establishing the CIS. At the same time they announced that the new confederation would be open to all republics of the former Soviet Union, as well as other nations sharing the same goals.
Gorbachev described this as an "illegal and dangerous" constitutional coup, but it soon became clear that the development could not be stopped: On December 21, 1991, the leaders of 11 of the 15 Soviet Socialist Republics met in Alma-Ata, KazakhstanKazakhstan ( Kazakh: #x49A;қ Qazaqstan Russian: Kazakhstan , also spelled Kazakstan is a country that stretches over a vast expanse of Asia and a former republic of the now extinct USSR. It has borders with Russia, the People's Republic of China, and, and signed the charter, thus ratifying the initial CIS treaty de factoDe facto is a Latin expression that means "in fact" or "in practice", commonly used as opposed to de jure (meaning "by law") when referring to matters of law or governance or technique (such as standards), that are found in the common experience as create. The three Baltic republics — LatviaThe Republic of Latvia ( Latvian: Latvijas Republika , or Latvia ( Latvian: Latvija , is a republic in Northeastern Europe. Bordering the Baltic Sea, Latvia is known as one of the Baltic States, together with Estonia and Lithuania, which border the nation, LithuaniaThe Republic of Lithuania ( Lithuanian Lietuva Polish Litwa, German Litauen, French Lituanie, Spanish Lituania, Estonian Lituania, Finnish Liettua) is a republic in Northeastern Europe. One of the three Baltic States along the Baltic Sea, it shares border, and Estonia — refused to join, as did Georgia: all four countries took the view that they had been illegally incorporated into the USSR in the first place. The charter stated that all the members were independent states and thereby effectively abolished the USSR.The 11 original member states were Azerbaijan, Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Russia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Ukraine. In December 1993, Georgia also joined the CIS in somewhat controversial circumstances, following a civil war in which Russian troops intervened on the side of the Shevardnadze government.