The ceremony in Astana last Thursday (May 29) on signing the Eurasian Economic Union between Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan was a surprisingly business-like affair. The lack of fanfare reflected the mood of Kazakhstani President Nursultan Nazarbaev, who was not altogether pleased with how his old Eurasian idea has ultimately been implemented. Russia's annexation of Crimea and harsh pressure on Ukraine increased his worries about sovereignty, so he made sure that the key political issues about common citizenship, coordinated foreign policy and joint border protection were excluded from the final text.
Belarusian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka added his reservation to the idea of a common currency, but he secured a hefty package of Russian subsidies while lashing out against the liberal critics of the "alliance of dictators".
Economists express doubt as to the value the integration project actually brings, pointing out that the volume of trade between the three states decreased by 14.5 percent in the first quarter of this year and that a financial union among them has been postponed beyond 2020.
These omissions from the initially ambitious draft apparently did not upset President Vladimir Putin, however, who praised the "historic importance" of the newly-agreed Union and promised everybody a spectacular rise in prosperity. For him, the significance of the long-promised deal was that his Eurasian project remained on track despite the heavy fall-out from the Ukrainian debacle. Moreover, coming just a week after Putin's visit to Shanghai, the trilateral pact also proved that Russia did not accept the role of being a "raw material appendage" to China, but would continue to consolidate its own zone of economic dominance. Putin keeps trying to pull other states into this zone, though Armenia's President Serzh Sargsyan was dismayed to hear in Astana that Azerbaijan's breakaway territory of Karabakh would have to remain out of the common economic space.