Russia’s former—and likely next—president wants to join former Soviet countries in a “Eurasian Union.” The entity would be rooted in Russia’s Customs Union with Belarus and Kazakhstan, to allow labor, capital, and trade to flow freely among the countries beginning next year, Reuters notes. But “we are not going to stop there,” the current prime minister writes. His “ambitious goal”: to “achieve an even higher integration level in the Eurasian Union.”
The Eurasian Union would link member nations’ “economic and currency policy,” but it wouldn’t be a new Soviet Union, he says. “It would be naive to attempt to restore or copy something from the past.” Putin cites “difficulties” within other attempts at international trade cooperation, including the World Trade Organization. Still, unions like the European Union and NAFTA are “'bricks'” that “can assemble into a more stable global economy,” he writes. (More Vladimir Putin stories.)