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Putin Gives Nod for Armenia's Eurasian-Union Membership

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  • Putin Gives Nod for Armenia's Eurasian-Union Membership

    EurasiaNet.org
    Sept 2 2014

    Putin Gives Nod for Armenia's Eurasian-Union Membership

    September 2, 2014 - 8:29am, by Giorgi Lomsadze


    Russia's Vladimir Putin has issued an ukaz on authorizing an agreement
    to accept Armenia into the Eurasian Union, a planned back-in-the-USSR
    bloc, but this may or may not make Armenia's membership actually
    happen.

    Armenia's membership in the Russian- championed Eurasian Union, and
    its already active element, the Customs Union, has long smacked of a
    Nordic epic song, with multiple characters and events putting the
    spokes in Armenia's wheel. Customs-Union members Belarus and
    Kazakhstan are Armenia skeptics, and generally less keen about the
    Kremlin's everyone-with-a-Soviet-past-is-welcome policy.

    Putin's September 1 order, though, includes unnamed, "minor" changes
    to the terms of Armenia's membership. It is unclear if this refers to
    concessions on the Armenian-championed breakaway territory of
    Nagorno-Karabakh. Kazakhstan, with an eye to Turkic ally, Azerbaijan,
    which claims Karabakh as its own, strongly opposes Armenia's attempts
    to bring breakaway Karabakh into the Customs Union..

    Recent statements by both Putin and Kazakh President Nursultan
    Nazarbayev, though moderated by courtesies, suggest a muffled
    disagreement between Moscow and Astana. Some believe that Russia's
    stance on Armenia and its campaign in Ukraine have contributed to the
    reported chill.

    Nazarbayev said that he would quit the Eurasian Union if the terms of
    membership are changed or if the membership poses threat to
    Kazakhstan's independent statehood. Putin issued a reminder that
    Kazakhstan "had never had statehood" before Nazarbayev.

    In the meantime, Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev cancelled a
    trip to Yerevan, and the planned talks about Armenia's membership were
    postponed to a summit in Minsk in October. Armenian Foreign Minister
    Eduard Nalbandian insisted that Armenian membership in the Eurasian
    Union and its structures remains a work in progress.


    http://www.eurasianet.org/node/69786

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