Prior to the meeting, President Vladimir Putin and his CIS counterparts will see the exhibitions of innovative achievements and industrial design that have been organized within the forum’s framework. Then, they’ll gather for a plenary meeting that will discuss new and wider mechanisms of interaction and integration inside the Commonwealth and in the markets of third countries.

The CIS presidents will hold a separate summit in the Konstantinov Palace on Sunday afternoon.

President Putin will continue a series of bilateral contacts with the CIS presidents. He has had separate meetings with Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili, Tajik President Emomali Rakhmon and Uzbek President Islam Karimov. Putin will meet other CIS leaders on Sunday. Earlier, the representatives of the Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko mentioned the possibility of his meeting with Putin. It may be that Putin will be able to talk to Azerbaijani President Ilkham Aliev on the sidelines of the economic forum. Turkmen President Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov is a newcomer to the CIS summit.

Putin is an advocate of informal CIS summits. He believes they offer a good opportunity to discuss urgent problems. "It’s a useful club for exchanging information and revealing political, humanitarian and administrative problems," the Russian president said.

Putin said informal summits provided good ground for holding regular meetings, solving problems and passing decisions on a bilateral basis or within integration associations.