The Eurasian Economic Union (EEU) was already in trouble before the pandemic. Rows between Belarus and Russia over the removal of crude oil subsidies led to mutual public recriminations. Kremlin pressure for political union prompts increasing resistance among the Belarusian political elite. In the Caucasus, Armenia balked at a hinted Kremlin plan to change the status quo in the Nagorno Karabakh conflict, and is also haggling over gas price cuts. The Kremlin’s hopes of gaining Central Asia’s most strategically located state – Uzbekistan – as a new EEU member failed after lengthy negotiations; Uzbekistan is joining only as an observer. Tajikistan, a Russian client state, remains hesitant as it fears a bigger competition from more developed EEU states would cut its already declining export-bound production. Numerous examples show how Tajikistan previously closed borders when it saw foreign low-priced production was overflowing the local market. It is also worried that since the EEU membership would involve giving up parts of economic and political sovereignty it will likely complicate relations with China which now holds much of its state debt.
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Emil Avdaliani: Eurasian disunion
(FILES) Russian President Vladimir Putin shakes hands with his Kazakh counterpart Nursultan Nazarbayev and Belarussian counterpart Alexander Lukashenko during a regular meeting of the Supreme Eurasian Economic Council in Astana on May 29, 2014. Russian President Vladimir Putin on May 29 signed a deal creating an economic union with Belarus and Kazakhstan, with Ukraine conspicuously absent after it turned its back on Moscow.
