The Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) is a good platform for coordination of efforts to overcome the effects of the economic crisis, the Russian president said on Saturday.
Dmitry Medvedev said modernization was a priority for the CIS economies.
"Unfortunately, they have not as yet fully recovered from the economic crisis," he said, addressing a CIS informal summit his Gorki residence just outside Moscow.
He said the CIS provided a very good platform for coordinated anti-crisis measures and that such efforts would continue.
"Our finance ministers regularly meet and discuss these issues," he said.
The CIS summit follows an informal summit of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), a post-Soviet security bloc.
A Kremlin source previously said the summit did not have a fixed agenda and that the CIS leaders would use it to exchange opinions on the status and prospects for cooperation within the CIS.
The summit is attended by Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev, Turkmen President Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov, Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, Moldova's acting president Mihai Ghimpu, Tajik President Emomali Rakhmon, Uzbek Prime Minister Shavkat Mirzieyev and CIS Executive Committee Chairman Sergei Lebedev.
The CIS leaders delivered an address to World War II veterans and workers on the home front.
The former Soviet states of Azerbaijan, Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Russia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Ukraine are members of the CIS. Georgia pulled out of the organization in 2009.
