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| Putin Signs Economic Alliance With Kazakhstan and Belarus | |
| (35 minutes later) | |
| ASTANA, Kazakhstan — The presidents of Russia, Kazakhstan and Belarus formally signed an agreement Thursday to create a limited economic union — an alliance hobbled by the absence of Ukraine but one long pursued by President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia to confirm his country as a global economic force. | |
| “Today we are creating a powerful, attractive center of economic development, a big regional market that unites more than 170 million people,” Mr. Putin said during the lead-up to the signing ceremony. He underscored the significant energy resources, work force and cultural heritage of the combined nations. | “Today we are creating a powerful, attractive center of economic development, a big regional market that unites more than 170 million people,” Mr. Putin said during the lead-up to the signing ceremony. He underscored the significant energy resources, work force and cultural heritage of the combined nations. |
| The geography of the group, formally known as the Eurasian Economic Union, meant it had the potential to create a global transportation hub joining the trade flows of Europe and Asia, Mr. Putin said, sitting at a round table with his two fellow leaders in front of their respective flags. | The geography of the group, formally known as the Eurasian Economic Union, meant it had the potential to create a global transportation hub joining the trade flows of Europe and Asia, Mr. Putin said, sitting at a round table with his two fellow leaders in front of their respective flags. |
| But the alliance that comes into force on Jan. 1 will be a pale imitation of what the members first envisioned, an eastern version of the 28-member European Union. | But the alliance that comes into force on Jan. 1 will be a pale imitation of what the members first envisioned, an eastern version of the 28-member European Union. |
| “Three weak economies getting together and integrating, how much good can come out of it?” said Nargis Kassenova, the director of the Central Asian Studies Center at KIMEP University in Almaty, Kazakhstan, and part of a small but vocal opposition to the union in Kazakhstan. “Now it is even worse because one is under sanctions and drifting away from the West,” she added, referring to Western economic sanctions against Russia. | “Three weak economies getting together and integrating, how much good can come out of it?” said Nargis Kassenova, the director of the Central Asian Studies Center at KIMEP University in Almaty, Kazakhstan, and part of a small but vocal opposition to the union in Kazakhstan. “Now it is even worse because one is under sanctions and drifting away from the West,” she added, referring to Western economic sanctions against Russia. |
| Even one of the presidents, Alexander Lukashenko of Belarus, which received a $2 billion loan and energy concessions from Russia just before the signing, said the union was less than anticipated. “Unfortunately it is not the agreement that our partners originally announced,” he told Belta, the official Belarus news agency. | Even one of the presidents, Alexander Lukashenko of Belarus, which received a $2 billion loan and energy concessions from Russia just before the signing, said the union was less than anticipated. “Unfortunately it is not the agreement that our partners originally announced,” he told Belta, the official Belarus news agency. |
| The agreement coalesced with great fanfare — and quickly, with members changing trade laws in a matter of years that required decades for the European Union. But in the end it became less about promoting economic development than providing Russia with a diplomatic win, analysts said. | |
| Like the massive gas agreement Russia signed with China earlier this month, the Eurasian Economic Union is a way for Moscow to show that it is pivoting to Asia and that the Western sanctions imposed after Russia annexed Crimea will not succeed in isolating it. | |
| “It is meant to signal that these Western programs and opprobrium are not having an effect on the economy and that Russia is developing into a distinct pole in the multipolar system,” said Alexander Cooley, a political science professor at Barnard College. | “It is meant to signal that these Western programs and opprobrium are not having an effect on the economy and that Russia is developing into a distinct pole in the multipolar system,” said Alexander Cooley, a political science professor at Barnard College. |
| The Eurasian union idea was initially broached 20 years ago by President Nursultan A. Nazerbayev, the leader of the sprawling, sparsely populated Kazakhstan. As the Soviet Union disintegrated, he suggested that a union could provide the economic, national and military security that had evaporated. | |
| But a curious thing happened on the way to implementation. By the time Russia came around to the idea, under Mr. Putin, the former Soviet republics had developed on their own. In Kazakhstan, for example, 47 percent of its trade activity was with Russia in 1995. By 2011, 40 percent of its exports went to Europe while only 9 percent went to Russia. | |
| Russia adopted the idea of a Eurasian Union for three main reasons, according to analysts. | |
| First, Mr. Putin wanted to create his own economic pole that would raise Russia to the status of other major global trading powers like the European Union, China and the United States. | |
| Second, the union would secure Moscow’s influence over the economic development of its former republics, particularly in Central Asia, before they began to look elsewhere — China, for example. | |
| Third, many analysts believe Mr. Putin came to see the Eurasian union as an almost physical manifestion of his budding ideology that Russia and its satellites represent the anti-West, a bastion of more conservative, more traditional, more religious values opposed to aspects of Western culture like gay rights and independent political activism. | |
| It was the first of these reasons that Mr. Putin stressed in an editorial he published in the newspaper Izvestia in December 2011, laying out his vision. | |
| “We suggest a powerful supranational association capable of becoming one of the poles in the modern world and serving as an efficient bridge between Europe and the dynamic Asia-Pacific region,” he wrote. | |
| Mr. Putin denied that he was trying to recreate the Soviet Union, a charge frequently leveled by critics of the plan, including the United States. | |
| “His political vision is of a greater Russia. I said when I was still secretary that his goal is to re-Sovietize Russia’s periphery,” Hillary Rodham Clinton, the former United States secretary of state, said in a speech in March. As secretary, she had suggested it was a threat, saying, “We know what the goal is, and we are trying to figure out effective ways to slow down or prevent it.” | |
| Mr. Putin seems to have diminished the union himself by annexing Crimea and stationing 40,000 troops along the Russia-Ukraine border for two months, threatening an invasion. | |
| Problems were manifest even before the Ukraine crisis. The fundamental flaw, experts noted, was that all the regimes involved in creating the union are run by authoritarian figures loath to share power within their own governments, much less with other states. Even the democracies of the European Union wrestle with that constantly. | |
| Some analysts suggest that the loss of Ukraine as a potential member was the death knell for the Eurasian Economic Union. On a purely economic scale, losing Ukraine meant losing a market of nearly 50 million people. Ukraine also provided economic diversity when paired with the two energy exporters. | |
| But more important, the use of the military has spooked the other members. At the last moment, some senior figures questioned the idea of the union itself. | |
| “We cannot be in a union with an occupying state,” Oraz Jandosov, a former Kazakh central bank governor and finance minister, said in a March interview with the website Ratel.su. He fretted about Western economic sanctions on Russia reverberating through the Kazakh economy. | |
| Kazakhstan also felt vulnerable in particular because one-quarter of its population is ethnic Russians, concentrated along the northern border. Mr. Putin and other senior figures stressed that Russia felt it had the right to safeguard the 25 million ethnic Russians outside its borders. | |
| Russia proposed several attributes that mirrored the European Union, including a common passport and currency, a collective Parliament, a common border force and a common economic foreign policy. Kazakhstan insisted that it all come out of the treaty. | |
| “We are not creating a political organization, we are forming a purely economic union,” Bakytzhan Sagintayev, the first deputy prime minister and lead negotiator, said in an interview. “It is a pragmatic means to get benefits. We don’t meddle into what Russia is doing politically and they cannot tell us what foreign policy to pursue.” | |
| Ultimately, the Ukraine situation distinctly dampened enthusiasm for the deal in Kazakhstan. | |
| “Finally, after 20 years, Kazakhstan changed its attitude toward the union from a very optimistic and ambitious approach to integration, to a very cautious and restrictive approach,” said Telegen Askarov, a journalist and independent political analyst. |