Vladimir Putin, Russia’s powerful Prime Minister, has proposed the creation of a new union between Russia and other post-Soviet states which could lead to a new federation resembling the old Soviet Union.
Mr Putin, who is set to regain the Russian presidency next year, which would see him overtake Joseph Stalin as Russia’s longest serving leader, announced that the countries which once formed the old Soviet Union should enter into a “Eurasian Union”.
Writing in Izvestia, the Russian daily broadsheet, Mr Putin said that the union would be based on the customs union which came into force last year between Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan.
He said: “We are not going to stop there. We are talking about a model of a powerful supranational union capable of becoming one of the poles in the modern world.”
Mr Putin added: “We received a big legacy from the Soviet Union – infrastructure, current industrial specialization, and a common linguistic, scientific and cultural space. To use this resource together for our development is in our common interest.”
This December marks the 20th anniversary of the dissolution of the Soviet Union, an event once described by Prime Minister Putin as the “greatest political catastrophe of the century”.
Feelings of nostalgia run high for the defunct Soviet state among many peoples in the former Soviet space, which is why Mr Putin has apparently chosen this anniversary to make the case for a new country which would encompass most of the lands which once made up the old Russian Empire in the 19th century and the Soviet Union in the 20th.
Since coming to power in the Kremlin in 2000, Mr Putin has achieved notable successes in integrating former Soviet republics with Russia. The Collective Security Treaty Organisation, a military alliance between Russia, Belarus, Armenia, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, was formed in 2002 while the Customs Union between Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan came into existence in 2010.
This new proposal by Mr Putin for a Eurasian Union has already received support from Kazakhstan’s long-serving leader Nursultan Nazarbayev, while Belarus, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan are expected to follow suit. Ukraine, under the pro-Moscow leadership of Viktor Yanukovych, is now being wooed by the Kremlin.
Mr Putin’s plan to integrate the former Soviet territories is not just driven by a conviction that the peoples there are fraternal. It is also aimed at permanently blocking Western geo-strategic ambitions in Ukraine and Western and Chinese geo-strategic ambitions in Central Asia.
