The Commonwealth of Independent States Cup was planned to be the Champions' Cup of countries of CIS Commonwealth and Baltics. In July 1992 at a meeting of executive committee of the CIS Association of Football Federations adopted decision on launching the First Commonwealth of Independent States Cup since 1993 as an open tournament to champions from the
USSR successor states (The
Commonwealth of Independent States, and well as
Estonia,
Latvia and
Lithuania). Until 1996
Ukraine officially boycotted the competition, but in
1995 FC Shakhtar Donetsk on own initiative broke the boycott. In
1995–
2006 the
Russia national under-21 football team participated in the tournament as the 16th team, but in
2007 and
2008 Serbia replaced it as the 17th nation sending a team to play in it, and became the first non-
former Soviet Union nation participating in the tournament. Unlike the rest of the states, who send their latest champions to play in the tournament,
Serbia has sent
OFK Beograd to play in the tournament. with the 2009 CIS Cup title. In its first years the tournament was popular in the territories of the
former Soviet Union, including the most titled teams from the old
Soviet Top League.
Spartak Moscow from
Russia, and
Dynamo Kyiv from
Ukraine each won the cup several times but, after less than a decade, the teams from
Russia and
Ukraine became hesitant to send their best players to play on the artificial turf at the
Olympic Stadium, so they sent their reserve players instead or sometimes the league runners-up participated in their place. This resulted in the decrease of the tournament's popularity in those states particularly and in the international value of the tournament overall. In 2006 a new tournament,
Channel One Cup, started and caught the attention of the
Russian and
Ukrainian teams, which even more decreased the popularity of the Commonwealth of Independent States Cup tournament. A big scandal occurred in
2006, when the
Armenian champion
FC Pyunik refused to play the
Azerbaijani team,
Neftçi PFK due to the lack of diplomatic relations between the two countries' governments at that time due to the
Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.
FC Pyunik defeated
Ukrainian team
FC Shakhtar Donetsk 3–1 in the quarter-final, earning a place in the semi-final against
Neftçi. However, FC Pyunik announced that they would no play against an
Azerbaijani team, and flew home from
Moscow the same evening. The
Russian Football Union gave
FC Shakhtar Donetsk a technical victory 3–0 so they could play in the semi-final instead of
FC Pyunik, but
FC Shakhtar Donetsk declined the offer stating that "...we would really want to play in the semi-final, but we don't want to get there by any other way than sport". Eventually,
Neftçi PFK were given a bye to the final, where they defeated the
Lithuanian club
FBK Kaunas 4–2. In 2007 talks began about changing the format of the cup, and uniting it with the
Channel One Cup in order to bring back the interest of the
Russian and
Ukrainian teams, and in 2007 its games were even visited by representatives from
FIFA, but nevertheless, nothing came out from those talks and efforts. In October 2009,
Bunyodkor coach
Luis Felipe Scolari announced that his Uzbek side would not enter the 2010 tournament due to focusing on the
Asian Champions League. ==Finals==