Belavezha Accords

Agreement which declared the Soviet Union effectively dissolved and established the Commonwealth of Independent States in its place. It was signed at the state dacha near Viskuli in Belovezhskaya Pushcha on December 8, 1991, by the leaders of Russia, Ukraine and Belarus (Boris Yeltsin, Leonid Kravchuk and Stanislav Shushkevich). On December, 1991, Mikhail Gorbachev resigned as the President of the Soviet Union and turned control of the powers to Boris Yeltsin, thus accepting the de-facto dissolution of the Soviet Union.