MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia's Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said he wants to bring ex-Soviet states into a "Eurasian Union" in an article which outlined his first foreign policy initiative as he prepares to return to the Kremlin as the country's next president.
Putin said the new union would build on an existing Customs Union with Belarus and Kazakhstan which from next year 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," Putin wrote in an article which will be published in Izvestia newspaper on October 4.
Putin said last month he would run in the March 2012 presidential election and his current public approval ratings show that he is set to win.
Putin's initiative comes as Russia nears the end of its 18-year-old negotiations to join the World Trade Organization. In the article Putin made no secret of his skepticism about the global trade watchdog.
"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," he wrote.
In 2009, Putin threw Russia's bid to join the WTO into disarray, saying Russia would instead form the Customs Union with Belarus and Kazakhstan. The new initiative will have to be explained to WTO members.
WRONG CROSSROADS
Putin, who once called the collapse of the USSR in 1991 "the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century," said his new project would not resemble the Soviet Union.
"It would be naive 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," Putin wrote.
Russia's relationship with its ex-Soviet neighbors has been troubled by trade and political disputes and even armed conflicts such as the 2008 war with Georgia.
Putin said he saw the new union as a supra-national body which would coordinate "economic and currency policy" between its members. It would also be open to new members.
Putin said that the Customs Union would expand to take in Central Asian republics of Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. He also made a veiled criticism of Ukraine which chose to stay outside the union citing its commitment to European integration.
Some of Russian's neighbors were unwilling to commit to integration because this appeared to contradict their decision to build ties with Europe.
But this was a wrong choice, he wrote. He argued that 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 wrote that he saw the way out of the global crisis through a regional integration, mentioning the European Union, Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation, the North American Free Trade Agreement and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations as examples.
"These 'bricks' can assemble into a more stable global economy," Putin wrote.

Thank you for mentioning this, Ethelred.

Just recently, the number of German armed forces went below 200.000 men for the first time. Obviously the FRG military is a US-ʝʊdɛօ vassal army, but still a potential threat as the biggest land force in Western and Central Europe.

With the end of conscription, this is gone and the military power is shifting, for whatever reason.

Are we so certain that Russia is not a relative bastion of sanity? According to Alexander Dugin, Putin is ardently anti-globalist and a supporter of national sovereignty, and the Russian people are, despite their many faults, only superfically modernist.

I've heard from former US marines that the poles and the Ukrainians still have manly soldiers that would fight Russia. They said the German’s and western Europeans outside of the British royal marines and the French foreign legion were a sad joke.

It is so blatantly obvious to anyone with eyes to see and ears to hear that Russia is the scourge of the world and has never given up her plans for a global Communist hegemony.  There is irrefutable evidence from many sources including former Soviet spy's proving how Russia has done a magnificent job in lulling the West to sleep and we've bought the big lie.  C'mon, even Gorby is on record admitting this for crying out loud.  How much more proof do we need?  

Does anyone know if Sr. Lucia really said this statement?  It doesn't really matter if she did, events are proving this to be spot on.

Lucia, the last living seer from Fatima, 7 April 1990 (Fatima was 1917):

"The events taking place in Europe are a deception. Russia will be the scourge for all nations, because it was not converted. Russia attacks the West, and China invades in Asia."