MINSK (Interfax) — The Ukrainian mission to the CIS statutory bodies closed in August, according to CIS Executive Secretary and Executive Committee Chairman Sergei Lebedev.

In April, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko had announced plans to quit the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) and terminate parts of a friendship treaty with Russia. Poroshenko urged the government to present a proposal to lawmakers on Ukraine’s full withdrawal from the CIS, which Kyiv has been an associate member of since the group was formed following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.

Ukraine has been fighting against Russia-backed separatists in the eastern regions of Donetsk and Luhansk since April 2014, after Russia seized control of Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula.