Putin Wants to Create Eurasian Union With Former USSR Countries

**New Guy** · October 4th, 2011, 14:36

who isn't surprised by this?

http://www.foxnews.com/world/2011/10...est=latestnews

Putin Wants to Create Eurasian Union With Former USSR Countries
Published October 04, 2011
| FoxNews.com
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AP2011
Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin attends a United Russia party's congress in Moscow on Friday, Sept. 23, 2011.
Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin called for the creation of a Eurasian economic union in an article published Tuesday, as he prepares to return to the Kremlin after the March presidential elections.
The country aims to build the “Eurasian Union” on the base of the existing Customs Union, a trade group that includes Kazakhstan and Belarus, Putin wrote in an article in the Russian newspaper Izvestia. The statement represented another step in the country’s drive to rebuild economic ties between former Soviet republics.
Putin said the talk of creation the Eurasian Union is not about "the recreation of the USSR" but of building a connection between Europe and the Asia-Pacific region. Putin said that the union, which is open for new members, will aim to closer coordinate the economic and currency policies of its member states.
"We are not going to stop there and are setting an ambitious goal -- to achieve an even higher integration level in the Eurasian Union," Putin wrote in Izvestia.
Russia's ambition previously caused problems in its World Trade Organization accession talks, which the country has been involved in almost since the collapse of the Soviet Union and hopes to finalize this year.
The first step toward the unionl will be made Jan. 1, when the Customs Union members are planning to create the so-called Common Economic Space, which will coordinate its members' macroeconomic policies, competition rules and agriculture subsidies, among other issues.
About two years ago, Putin shocked the WTO by saying that his country would apply to join the trade body as a group with Belarus and Kazakhstan, but the plan was eventually dismissed.
NewsCore and Reuters contributed to this report.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/world/2011/10...#ixzz1Zp8kdncj

**BRVoice** · October 4th, 2011, 15:41

I'm not. Indeed, it's very worring to see that this not even raises an eye in the mainstream world media 20 years after the so called 'Fall of the Soviet Union'.

I've even seen in Wikipedia a fictional new flag of the USSR.

**BRVoice** · October 4th, 2011, 15:54

I've found another one:

**BRVoice** · October 4th, 2011, 16:02

The amazing thing is that in his book '1984', George Orwell write about an union of countries called Eurasia.

Unfortunately this Eurasian Union isn't surprising. It's indeed a sad, sad thing.

I feel sorry for the world who fell in the USSR's ending trap.

**AWM** · October 4th, 2011, 16:11

Gotta love that hammer and sickle!
You know, I've got hammers, probably 20 of them, I honestly don't know what Tam does with them all, it would probably take 20 minutes to find even one! I suspect you guys have the same problem.
Anyway, I don't have a sickle. Everybody needs a sickle, a good one. Any one have any suggestions?
Dark, late in the night, or early in the morning, an intruder! Dang, I didn't leave the suppressor on the AR, but I don't want to wake the grandchildren, and I dare not use Tam's "Highlander" sword, so what is there. A sickle! That would be terrific! Ever been sickled? I bet not, at least not around to tell about it!
You know, if those eurasian peasants had used those sickles on the secret police in the middle of the night, well, we wouldn't be having all these problems!

**vector7** · October 4th, 2011, 16:17

Companion Threads:

Putin proposes setting up ‘Eurasian Union’ of former Soviet nations

By Associated Press, Updated: Tuesday, October 4, 7:55 AM

MOSCOW — Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has proposed forming a “Eurasian Union” of former Soviet nations, saying the bloc could become a major global player competing for influence with the United States, the European Union and Asia.

Putin, who has lamented the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union as the “greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century,” denied that his proposal represents an attempt to rebuild the Soviet empire.

But he said in an article published Tuesday in the daily Izvestia that the new alliance should emerge as “one of the poles of the modern world, serving as an efficient link between Europe and the dynamic Asia-Pacific region.”

Putin, who is all but certain to reclaim the presidency in March’s election, has been accused of rolling back Russia’s post-Soviet democratic achievements during his two terms as president in 2000-2008. He has remained Russia’s de-facto leader after shifting into the premier’s job due to a term limit, and his protege and successor Dmitry Medvedev proposed last month that Putin run for president.

“There is no talk about rebuilding the USSR in one way or another,” Putin said. “It would be naive to try to restore or copy something that belongs to the past, but a close integration based on new values and economic and political foundation is a demand of the present time.”

Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan already have formed an economic alliance that has removed customs barriers in mutual trade during the past summer. They are to introduce unified market rules and regulations starting Jan. 1. Putin said that Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan are expected to join the grouping.

“We aren’t going to stop at that and are putting forward an ambitious task of reaching a new, higher level of integration with the Eurasian Union,” Putin said. “Along with other key players and regional structures, such as the European Union, the United States, China and the Asia Pacific Economic Community, it should ensure stability of global development.”

Russia has long called for stronger cooperation between ex-Soviet nations, but earlier attempts at forging closer ties between them have failed due to sharp economic differences. Many former Soviet nations have looked westward and remain suspicious of Moscow’s intentions, setting a rocky path to Putin’s “Eurasian Union.”

Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, considered more Russia-friendly than his pro-Western predecessor, has continued to focus on closer relations with the European Union, shattering Moscow’s hopes for luring Ukraine into its orbit. Yanukovych complained last month that the Kremlin was trying to coerce Ukraine into joining the customs union of Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan, and said that he wouldn’t yield to pressure.

Even Russia’s ties with its closest ally, Belarus, has been marred by tensions. Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, whose government is struggling with a spiraling financial crisis, has staunchly resisted Moscow’s push for controlling stake in Belarus’ top state-controlled industrial assets.

Putin’s plan also comes in potential competition with the Eastern Partnership, an initiative launched two years ago by Poland and Sweden, which aims to deepen European Union integration with six ex-Soviet nations: Georgia, Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova, Armenia and Azerbaijan.

Putin argued that deeper integration between ex-Soviet nations shouldn’t contradict their aspirations to forge closer ties with the EU.

Some observers said that Putin’s article heralds what could become a top policy goal after his return to presidency. “From the geopolitical viewpoint it represents an attempt to revive the USSR,” Alexander Dugin, a political scholar and a longtime proponent of Russian expansionism, said in comments in online news agency Nakanune.

Others were skeptical. Dmitry Oreshkin, an independent political expert, said on Ekho Moskvy radio that Putin’s proposal was merely a campaign trick aimed at voters nostalgic about the Soviet past.

Copyright 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

**vector7** · October 4th, 2011, 16:46

Putin Calls For Eurasian Union In Former Soviet Space

Vladimir Putin (center) at a EurAsEC summit with Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbaev (left) and Belarusian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka in October 2007

October 04, 2011
By Tom Balmforth
MOSCOW -- Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has outlined a grand vision for integrating ex-Soviet states in his first major policy initiative since he announced his intention to return to the Kremlin.

In an article on the front page of the daily "Izvestiya," Putin called for the creation of a "Eurasian Union" that would include Russia, Belarus, and Kazakhstan.

Putin praised Russia's existing Customs Union with the two countries, which plans to remove all barriers to trade, capital, and labor movement next year. He said such a union, founded in 2009, must "build on the experience of the European Union and other regional coalitions."

But Putin stressed that it is time to set a "more ambitious goal" and "to achieve an even higher integration level in the Eurasian Union."

Analysts suggest the proposal is partially an effort to boost the authorities' popularity by tapping into society's nostalgia for the Soviet Union.

"Putin is trying to play toward the imperialist sentiment of the electoral majority," said Pavel Salin, an analyst at the Moscow-based Center for Political Assessments. "There is nostalgia for the imperial past. It may not be in the format of the Soviet Union as it is without Central Asia, the Baltics, and the South Caucasus, but still it harks back to the imperial past. Putin is playing on these strings."

'Not Recreating Soviet Union'

Putin, who famously called the collapse of the USSR the "greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century," wrote that "the idea is not to recreate the Soviet Union in some form."

It would be "naive," Putin wrote, "to attempt to restore or copy something from the past. However, a stronger integration on a new political and economic basis and a new system of values is an imperative of our era."

Nikolai Petrov, an analyst at the Moscow Carnegie Center, said the article sought to draw attention to Putin's foreign policy victories as the authorities' electoral campaign gathers momentum, with the State Duma elections on December 4.

"I don't think there is anything new in this view of Russian foreign policy," Petrov said, adding that the article looks like "a rather symbolic gesture to show how effective Putin has been in regard to foreign policy with Russia's neighbors."

"Also, the article is not a program," he said, "rather it showcases his achievements."

Numbers Game

Putin hailed the "Unified Economic Space" of Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Russia that will be launched in January 2012 and called it a "historic landmark" for all the ex-Soviet countries that Moscow sees as its "sphere of influence."

He also called for more former Soviet states to join, dismissing Ukraine's protestations that such a move would conflict with Kyiv's aspirations eventually to join the European Union.

The Unified Economic Space, modeled on the European Union, will unite 165 million consumers and act as a geo-economic counterweight to the EU, "have a positive impact globally," and act as economic hub linking Europe and Asia, Putin wrote.

Salin said Putin, who will seek to return to the Kremlin for a third term as president in an election slated for March, is seeking to reverse the ruling elite's sagging popularity.

"[Putin] is in a very difficult situation because the popularity ratings [of the authorities] are on a downward turn, and the same goes for his own personal rating," Salin said. "He needed to find a card to play that would engage the electorate."

Putin's rating is still high, running about 70 percent, although it is down from the stratospheric 85 percent approval he enjoyed in 2008. United Russia's ratings fell to record lows of below 40 percent in June this year.

Petrov said the substance of Russian foreign policy is unlikely to change as Putin returns to the Kremlin, although he said he expects its tone to change as Medvedev, who was seen as more pro-Western, fades from the scene.

"No more will it be possible for them to play this tandem thing and pander to different audiences," Petrov said.

**BRVoice** · October 5th, 2011, 14:40

USSR2 File: Putin poised to return to Russian presidency in March 2012, presents first foreign policy initiative with advocacy of “Eurasian Union,” integrating Russia, former Soviet republics, and European Union in “common economic space”

Leave a Comment Posted by periloustimes1 on October 5, 2011

- Russia’s KGB Dictator Denies Intention of Restoring Soviet Union, Praises NAFTA and Other Regional Bodies as “Bricks” to Be Assembled in Quest for “Way Out of the Global Crisis”

- Eurasian Union Warmed-Over Version of Gorbachev’s “Common European Home,” Stepping Stone to Lenin’s Goal of “World Soviet Republic”

Pictured above: A man looks at a caricature depicting Russian Premier Vladimir Putin as past Soviet dictator Leonid Brezhnev on his computer screen in Moscow on October 5, 2011.

By the end of the 1980s, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics’ command economy could not outpace the USA in the arms race, could not provide a comparable standard of living for Soviet citizens vis-à-vis the West, and could no longer bear the burden of maintaining a massive conventional military presence in Eastern Europe since 1945. For these reasons, most Western conservatives/classic liberals and libertarians believe, the Soviet Union collapsed. This is only part of the story, though.

Within the conservative/libertarian movement, an “end-time remnant” of fervent, intellectually robust anti-communists exists, a clique which to this day maintains that the North Atlantic Alliance did not win the Cold War’s ideological battle, that is, in the sense of finally discrediting the idea of communism once and for all.

This vanguard of freedom heeded the warnings of KGB Major Anatoliy Golitsyn—whose 27-year-old published predictions are corroborated by other Soviet Bloc defectors like Czech Major General Jan Sejna and political developments in the “post”-communist states—that Soviet communism would feign its demise, promote European integration, remove any justification for NATO’s existence, and end the Sino-Soviet split with an alliance with the Red Chinese, all with the intent of returning another day to either smash the “bourgeois” nations in an unexpected nuclear war, or lure them into a world federation of repackaged communist states.

Most of Golitsyn’s predictions in his first book, New Lies for Old (1984), writes Mark Riebling in Wedge: From Pearl Harbor to 9/11–How the Secret War between the FBI and CIA Has Endangered National Security (2002), came to pass by the early 1990s, proving that this East Bloc defector had real “inside information” from the heart of the Politburo.

Fast forward to 2011. President Dmitry Medvedev’s commitment to modernizing the Russian military in collaboration with Moscow’s allies in the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) and the Kremlin’s frequent overtures for a security arrangement embracing both Russia and the European Union (or NATO sans the USA) show that the Moscow Leninists hold both cards in their hands. Although only 26 years old when the Soviet Union was dismantled, Medvedev is a graduate of the Komsomol and, thus, indoctrinated in Marxism-Leninism.

Russian “voters” face a parliamentary election in December and a presidential election in March.

As in the days of open communism, they have few if any real options. The two top presidential candidates, for example, are Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, an “ex”-communist and career Chekist, versus Gennady Zyuganov, head of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, legal successor of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU). Putin, Medvedev, and Zyuganov hold regular closed-door meetings. Due to the global recession, Putin’s popularity has slipped somewhat but he still holds a commanding lead over unabashed Stalinist Zyuganov.

Whether an “ex”-communist or open communist holds the post is almost irrelevant. Either way, the Soviet strategists will advance their stealth plan for global domination and the demise of their principal enemy, the USA.

In an article published in the October 4 issue of Izvestia, Putin has essentially called for the restoration of the Soviet Union, albeit in a new and improved form that will include the European Union, an entity that former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev has called the “new European Soviet.” In what amounts to his first foreign policy initiative, Putin writes:
We must bring the ex-Soviet states into a Eurasian Union. The new union will be built on Russia’s existing Customs Union with Belarus and Kazakhstan, which in 2012 will remove all barriers to trade, capital, and labor movement between the three countries.

We are not going to stop there and are setting an ambitious goal – to achieve an even higher integration level in the Eurasian Union.

The new union will be a supra-national body that would coordinate economic and currency policy between its members. It will also be open to new members.

In the Izvestia article, Putin did not hide his disapproval of the World Trade Organization: “The process of finding new post-crisis global development models is moving forward with difficulty.

For example, the Doha round [of international trade talks] has practically stopped. There are objective difficulties inside the WTO.” In 2009, Putin threw Russia’s 18-year-old bid to join the WTO into confusion by committing Russia to the Customs Union with Belarus and Kazakhstan.

Putin, who in 2005 called the collapse of the USSR “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century,” assures readers that this new project would not resemble the Soviet Union.

“It would be naive to attempt to restore or copy something from the past,” he soothed.

“However, a stronger integration on a new political and economic basis and a new system of values is an imperative of our era.”

Even though pro-Russian politicians rule in Kiev and Minsk and may shortly lead a government in Latvia, Russia’s relationship with its ex-Soviet neighbors has been tempestuous, disrupted by energy and trade disputes, and the armed conflict with Georgia in 2008. However, Putin predicts that the Customs Union will at least absorb the Central Asian republics of Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan.

In his article, the Russian PM issued a veiled criticism of Ukraine, which has joined neither the Customs Union nor the CSTO military alliance. “This was a wrong choice,” he complains, adding:
The Customs Union and in future the Eurasian Union would be the European Union’s partner in talks over the creation of a common economic space, guaranteeing its members a stronger voice. Membership in the Eurasian Union, apart from direct economic benefits, will enable its members to integrate into Europe faster and from a much stronger position.

Putin concludes that “the way out of the global crisis” is to be found through regional integration, mentioning as positive examples the European Union, Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation, North American Free Trade Agreement, and Association of Southeast Asian Nations. “These ‘bricks’ can assemble into a more stable global economy,” he states.

In 1989, in his propaganda offensive against the West, Soviet dictator Gorbachev, who still draws audiences at various speaking events, urged the formation of a “common European home,” from the Ural Mountains to the Atlantic Ocean. More than 20 years later, enough building blocks exist to realize Putin’s “Eurasian Union,” which also replicates Vladimir Lenin’s dream of a “world Soviet republic.” All Moscow needs to do is to fold the EU, Commonwealth of “Independent” States, Union State of Russia and Belarus, Customs Union, and CSTO into one enormous political-economic-military entity.

Afterward, Red China and Iran can join the Eurasian Union via the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. The African Union and Union of South American Nations will be compliant allies, while North America remains a stubborn holdout against world government.