Putin Vows 'Integration' With Regional Allies As Imperial Dream Falters

Russian President Vladimir Putin has said he plans "further deepening of integration in all areas" with fellow members of the Moscow-led Eurasian Economic Union, an economic union which forms a single market for 184 million people across five former Soviet states.

In a message addressed to fellow EAEU leaders on Monday, Putin touted the bloc as a pole of the "multipolar world that is being formed," Russia's state-run Tass news agency reported.

The EAEU—the members of which are all also part of the Collective Security Treaty Organization alliance—is a pillar of Moscow's attempt to undermine the post-Soviet U.S.-dominated world order by enhancing and projecting Russian power.

The bloc was formed in 2014 and was perceived as a response to the European Union, though it has largely failed to duplicate the legal and institutional foundations that have made the EU a global powerhouse.

Russia may look to expand cooperation and integration with EAEU states as Western sanctions related to Moscow's invasion on Ukraine curtail its import and export opportunities in Europe and North America.

Putin said in his statement published on Monday that Moscow is starting work on planning documents to guide the EAEU's direction through to 2030 and 2045. Moscow, he said, will "do everything possible to facilitate further deepening of integration in all areas, including the political, economic, industrial, financial and technological fields."

"The development of technological potential of EAEU member states, the achievement of true independence and self-reliance in this area are to become one of the main strategic priorities of the joint work," the president said.

"We suggest that efforts be integrated in the development and introduction of cutting-edge scientific and technical solutions into leading sectors of the economy, such as cars and chemical industry, transport machine building, microelectronics, aircraft construction, shipbuilding, pharmaceuticals industry, digital ecosystems, alternative energy, agriculture machine building, biotechnology and seed breeding."

Inter-bloc cooperation, Putin said, "has become a decent response to such global issues, which have intensified due to the pandemic and the illegal sanctions used by a number of countries, as poverty, climate changes, the shortage of resources, including the most important ones, food, water, energy.

"Obviously, the Union has all possibilities to become one of strong, independent, self-reliant poles of the multipolar world that is being formed, to be a center of attraction for all independent countries that share our values and look for cooperation with the EAEU."

But Putin's dream of deeper regional integration may be hamstrung by his invasion of Ukraine, which has unleashed fresh tensions within the EAEU/CSTO collective.

Belarus, led by President Alexander Lukashenko, is arguably the most tied to the Kremlin. Moscow stepped in to save the dictator from a popular uprising after the 2020 presidential election, and is now reportedly pressuring Minsk to join its invasion of Ukraine.

Lukashenko, who had admitted that the war has not gone to plan, appears to be trying to retain close ties with the Kremlin while avoiding direct confrontation with Kyiv. Kyrgyzstan, too, seems to be closely guarding its neutrality on the invasion despite initial expressions of solidarity with Moscow.

Other EAEU states have been more outspoken. Kazakhstan has pursued closer ties with the EU since Russia's full scale invasion began in February 2022 and is seeking to reduce its oil export dependence on Russia.

Astana also refused to recognize Russia's claimed annexation of four partially-occupied Ukrainian regions in September, and a senior government official told Reuters in October that President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev was reevaluating bilateral ties with Moscow.

While Putin's troops are bogged down in Ukraine, the decades-long Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict is resurging. Russian peacekeepers helped stop the round of intense fighting between the two Caucasus nations in 2020, but when fighting broke out again last year, Moscow's troops in the area failed to act.

Azerbaijan appears to be testing Moscow's resolve by attacking enemy positions and closing a key mountain road linking the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region to Armenia. The closure has prompted fury in Yerevan, where officials are frustrated that Russia's peacekeepers failed to keep the route open.

Armenian anger boiled over publicly in November when Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan dramatically refused to sign a draft CSTO declaration at the conclusion of the alliance summit in Yerevan, citing the bloc's failure to respond to Azerbaijan's actions.

This month, Pashinyan announced that Armenia would not host planned CSTO exercises, suggesting the presence of Russian troops in the country was more of a "threat" than a protection.