Putin Eyes 'Eurasian Union'

By Jon E. Dougherty at 4 Oct 2011

(Newsroom America) -- Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin says he wants to reconstitute all of the former Soviet satellite countries back into a "Eurasian Union," one of his first foreign policy goals as he prepares to take over the presidency.

In an article outlining his plan set to be published in the Izvestia newspaper Tuesday, Putin said it would build on a current Customs Union with Belarus and Kazakhstan, in which all barriers to free trade, labor movement of capital will be removed.

"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.

The de facto Russian leader said he would run in the March 2012 election, and current polls show he should win, reports said.

Russia has been working on joining the World Trade Organization for nearly two decades, but Putin threw a wrench in the process in 2009 when he formed the Customs Union.

Also, in his Izvestia piece, Putin made it clear he didn't trust the global trade union.

"The process of finding new post-crisis global development models is moving forward with difficulty," he said. "For example, the Doha round (of international trade talks) has practically stopped. There are objective difficulties inside the WTO."

Putin said the new union would not resemble the former Soviet empire.

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

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