Belavezha Accords

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The Belavezha Accords (Russian: Беловежские соглашения) is the agreement signed at the state dacha near Viskuli in Belovezhskaya Pushcha on December 8, 1991, by the Presidents of Russia, Ukraine and Belarus (Boris Yeltsin, Leonid Kravchuk and Stanislav Shushkevich), which declared the Soviet Union effectively dissolved and established the Commonwealth of Independent States in its place.

While doubts remained over the republican leader's authority to dissolve the Union, according to 1977 Soviet Constitution, Union's republics had the right to secede freely. On December 12, 1991 the Supreme Soviet of the Russian SFSR ratified the accords and at the same time denounced the 1922 Treaty on the Creation of the Soviet Union. On December 25, 1991, Mikhail Gorbachev resigned as the President of the Soviet Union and turned the powers of his office over to Boris Yeltsin, de facto accepting the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

The name is variously translated as Belavezh Accords, Belovezh Accords, Belovezha Accords, Belavezha Agreement, Belovezhskaya Accord, Belaya Vezha Accord, etc.

For historians, the accord marks the end of the Cold War.