Posted on 10/10/2014 10:50:43 AM PDT by elhombrelibre
Vulgar chants about Vladimir Putin before he arrived for a regional summit in Belarus did not augur well for the Russian president's hopes of bringing the leaders of former Soviet republics closer together.
Matters got even worse when bickering broke out at the start of the meeting, revealing fault lines over the Ukraine crisis and deepening doubts about the future of the loose grouping known as the Commonwealth of Independent States.
Jibes between Putin and the leader of Moldova, and barbs aimed at the absent Ukrainian leader, raised new questions about his ability to woo countries to the Eurasian Economic Union he is creating to try to rival the European Union's economic might.
"Unfortunately disintegration tendencies are growing in the Commonwealth, especially considering attempts by individual well-wishers to bury the CIS," Belarussian President Alexander Lukashenko told the leaders, seated at a vast, ornate round table in the huge Independence Palace in the capital Minsk.
(Excerpt) Read more at uk.reuters.com ...
Belarus never stopped being USSR
Correct
The Eurasian Economic Union is a reality. Armenia just acceded.
It has a long way to go but a unified common market of 170 million people is nothing to sneer at.
Only the European Union is more populous and has been around for over half a century.
Yet it was in Belarus that the chants were.
The Soviet Union was a reality too. Do you miss it?
If by unite, the author means conquer, they have a point.
A minority of Belarusians want looser ties with Russia. For most of them though, Russia is a fraternal country, not surprising that Russian is the dominant language there.
The ties between the two countries are complicated somewhat like the special relationship between the UK and the US; between them, its embodied in the Union State.
Yeah, “complicated.” That’s one way to put the slave/master relationship that your KGB buddies enforced on the neighbors of Russia.
The Soviet Union will not return. No one is talking about political integration and creating anything like the EU’s supranational political institutions.
This is purely an economic union, which is what the European Common Market originally was when it was founded in 1950.
Well said!
Re-assembling the old USSR with the aid of the commie in the white hut.
Then you and Putin won’t mind if Russia’s neighbors choose not to enter this so-called economic union. Right? LOL. Yeah, right, ask the Ukrainians.
That’s a tall order. Ukraine is gone and the rest of them jealously defend their national independence and sovereignty.
No one wants the Russians to assume the role of the Elder Brother. Putin’s vision has clear limits.
No body is joining the Eurasian Economic Union because they love Russia.
They are not joining.
That’s exactly the point. Whether to be in the post-Soviet space is for each country to decide for themselves.
Yeah, right. Ask the Ukrainians.
Lukashenko wanted to be where Putin is now.
If you note, Poroshenko was not forced at gunpoint to travel to Minsk.
His country is free to do what it wants. Ask him if he’s in Brussels.
He wanted to be President Of Russia but the Russians were cool to the idea.
The Union State has never had a presidency or unified Parliament.
Unity between Russia and Belarus is an elusive prospect partly because no one can agree on who should lead a unified country or what its policies are going to be.
Of course, the Russian troops in Ukraine are not a gun pointed at the Ukrainian people.
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