An international forum entitled 'Unity as a Way to Save Brotherly Nations' opened in the Ukrainian city of Donetsk on Friday, Itar-Tass reported.
The forum, organized on the initiative of Ukraine's and Russia's communist parties, is to be attended by delegates from communist parties from ten former Soviet republics, including Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Azerbaijan, Lithuania, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova and other countries. Among participants in the forum are lawmakers from former Soviet republics, state figures of the former Soviet Union, representatives from veteran, women's, youth and other public organizations.
"This forum is a next step on the path of the revival of a modernized Union State," said Georgy Buiko, the chairman of the organizational committee and member of the central committee of the Ukrainian communist party. "We do not seek to attract too much attention to today's date, but everyone knows what a tragic event August 19, 1991, was - a day that twenty years ago triggered a pseudo-democratic burst, which in the long run destroyed a great state."