Putin's long-term vision is to build a rival EU

[HMS Astute]

The UK, for example, participated in invasions because it wanted more resources (Iraq's oil, Libya's gold), so that the Bank of England can continue to print more money with those resources as collateral.

ignorance is bliss!

 

[HMS Astute]

The UK, for example, participated in invasions because it wanted more resources (Iraq's oil, Libya's gold), so that the Bank of England can continue to print more money with those resources as collateral.

ignorance is bliss!

 

[pmaitra]

ignorance is bliss!

Go on. Your posts are extremely informative and provide a lot of insight into things we know nothing about. Don't stop.

 

[HMS Astute]

The EAU is similar to what the EEC was in 1958. Right now, it may be only Russia, Kazakhstan and Belarus, but Armenia, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Turkmenistan are possible members. Their overall GDP today is around $2.5 Trillion.

it is still smaller than a poor and broken island's GDP.

This union combined with the the other members of SCO will make a bigger entity than the EU. The combined GDP of all the member states and observer states in the SCO is around $15 Trillion today, equivalent to the EU.

No. it is not.

 

[HMS Astute]

Go on. Your posts are extremely informative and provide a lot of insight into things we know nothing about. Don't stop.

won't waste my time posting the same thing over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again!

"You can't fix stupid"
"• R. Alan Woods

 

[pmaitra]

won't waste my time posting the same thing over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again!

"You can't fix stupid"
"• R. Alan Woods

You have too much time in hand. None of it is a waste. It would be, had you something useful to do.

 

[HMS Astute]

You did not miss my point, that GDP is not the sole indicator of national prosperity.

Agree. that' why i reckon although the GDP of developing countries with ridiculous populations such as China and India are rapidly growing, it can't be considered as they are becoming prosperous!!!

 

[pmaitra]

Agree. that' why i reckon although the GDP of developing countries with ridiculous populations such as China and India are rapidly growing, it can't be considered as they are becoming prosperous!!!

Unfortunately, you have chosen not to counter the several points I have made, even after a link was provided for the readers' convenience.

 

[p2prada]

it is still smaller than a poor and broken island's GDP.

I don't see how it matters. For one, the Russians are a major raw materials exporter while being self-reliant in many high technology sectors.

No. it is not.

The Chinese alone are $8 Trillion followed by India and Russia at $2 Trillion each.

If we actually start considering PPP which is more relevant for India and China, then the SCO is already bigger than the EU. By the time the SCO actually includes India and the others, the total GDP could be off the charts.

Using PPP, I think the total GDP with just the three countries is $21 Trillion, never mind the remaining countries while should add at least another trillion or two.

 

[jouni]

All SCO countries have the potential of creating an economic union. It may not have to be as integrated as Europe is, but it doesn't have to be as scattered as it is today.

The Russian customs union will require to be competitive with India and China if it is to succeed. So, the Russians creating a union from former Soviet states in the CAR is a pretty good idea and will make it more competitive making the SCO more relevant.

There were reports that China will relent to India joining the SCO. India joining the SCO would bring in some level of trust factor with the West to demonstrate that the SCO isn't aimed at countering NATO. NATO has become quite irrelevant anyway. The US is the only heavy hitter in it.

The EAU is similar to what the EEC was in 1958. Right now, it may be only Russia, Kazakhstan and Belarus, but Armenia, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Turkmenistan are possible members. Their overall GDP today is around $2.5 Trillion.

This union combined with the the other members of SCO will make a bigger entity than the EU. The combined GDP of all the member states and observer states in the SCO is around $15 Trillion today, equivalent to the EU.

Wow! In EU there is disagreements with "lazy" south and "pilkunnussija" north. It would be nice to see how these countries combine interests of all!

 

[p2prada]

Wow! In EU there is disagreements with "lazy" south and "pilkunnussija" north. It would be nice to see how these countries combine interests of all!

The level of integration in the EU is not required in the SCO currently. This type of a requirement will come after 40 or 50 years. Like we may not need a single monetary system.

By then a lot of things may have changed technologically, options that aren't available to the EU today. Like automation of manufacturing, newer forms of energy along with better healthcare and better education.

Btw, what's "pilkunnussija?"

 

[jouni]

The level of integration in the EU is not required in the SCO currently. This type of a requirement will come after 40 or 50 years. Like we may not need a single monetary system.

By then a lot of things may have changed technologically, options that aren't available to the EU today. Like automation of manufacturing, newer forms of energy along with better healthcare and better education.

Btw, what's "pilkunnussija?"

It's Finnish slang literally meaning "common (,)" "f#cker" meaning somebody who is too strict considering details...

 

[Ray]

and you have chosen to live in the western world despite the fact that you have been repeatedly and irritatingly keep saying how awful and terrible it is. i hope you were not brainwashed to immigrate to the west before you flocked. feel free to gtfo and settle down in a cold, isolated, (racist free?) russia where you will be working your @ss off to earn a peanut amount of money.

You seriously don't want to start a d!ck measuring contest with the west especially when it comes to debt, gdp, living standard, wealth, infrastructure, healthcare, education, defence, cutting edge technology, popularity, human development, life expectancy, homicide rate, foreign direct investment, ease of doing business, attractiveness index, corruption index and shit!

Easy does it on the quaint words that you use to express your anger with embarrassing parts of the anatomy and human waste mechanism. Hardly expected from those who fly the

; more so when they claim to have good behaviour and manner to the world.

 

[asianobserve]

How can Russia rival EU when it appears that it might even break-up?

From Siberia to Kaliningrad: the Fledgling Independence Movements Gaining Traction in Russia

Moscow appears to have successfully blocked efforts hold a march in favour of Siberian independence in Novosibirsk, the country's third most populous city, this Sunday.

The Novosibirsk mayor's office reportedly denied permission for the march in favour of Siberian Federalisation "in order to ensure the inviolability of the constitutional order, territorial integrity and sovereignty of the Russian Federation".

But Russian authorities have failed to prevent the ideas behind it from spreading not only to other Siberian cities like Yekaterinburg, but also – and more seriously – to Kaliningrad and Kuban.

Feliks Rivkin, an activist in Yekaterinburg, says he will be leading a demonstration in his home city at the weekend to force Moscow to live up to the Russian constitution and give Russian regions their federal rights. Even if the authorities refuse, he adds, his group plans to go ahead anyway.

Meanwhile, in the semi-autonomous Russian enclave of Kaliningrad, sandwiched between Poland and Lithuania, local activists are picking up on the same ideas. One Moscow commentator, Vladimir Titov, argues that Kaliningraders don't have all the bases for launching an independence movement, but he suggests that "the single place in Russia where at present regionalism as a political direction has real prospects" is precisely there.

Kaliningrad's non-contiguous location, its proximity to European Union countries, and the fact that 25% of its residents have Schengen visas and 60% have foreign passports, all have the effect of making ever more Kaliningraders look towards Europe rather than toward Russia proper.

Well-off Kaliningraders are buying property in the EU, they are sending their children to study in Lithuania, Poland and Germany, and "young Kaliningraders already find it difficult to name the main Russian cities, including in such lists Klaipeda, Riga, Poznan, Rostok and Lubeck," says Titov.

"This isn't surprising," he adds. "Warsaw and Yurmala for these young people are closer and more familiar than Kaluga or Khabarovsk." And their elders also reflect this sense of place: they speak about conditions "among them, in Russia" in much the same way they would talk about any other foreign country.

Increasingly too, he continues, Kaliningraders refer to their land not as Kaliningrad oblast but as the 'amber country' (after the area's best known natural resource) and to their capital as Koenigsberg, or more familiarly, Koenig. That doesn't please the authorities or "professional patriots" but it is the way things are. None of this means they want independence, but they seek real federalisation and see this as their time.

Making concessions to Kaliningrad's special situation seems entirely reasonable, Titov says, but "then a question arises: "If Kaliningrad can, why can't Siberia? And just who is to say that it can't?"

But interest in federalisation is not limited to Siberia and Kaliningrad. There are regionalist movements in Karelia, Ingermanland, Novgorod and elsewhere, and they have now been joined by a new one: in Kuban. Activists there have announced plans to hold a march for the federalisation of Kuban on 17 August to demand a separate republic be established for them.

Regional officials in Krasnodar have already refused to give them permission, but organisers say that they will go ahead anyway, citing their constitutional right to freedom of assembly in order to demand their constitutional rights for federalism.

Though these movements are small and fledgling, from Moscow's perspective, this will still be disturbing. Not only does it suggest that the centre may be losing its grip over at least some regions, but it raises the spectre of regional separatism of the kind that spread through the Russian Federation in the early 1990s and that Russian president Vladimir Putin has worked hard to suppress.

Though these movements are small and fledgling, from Moscow's perspective, this will still be disturbing.

Moreover, it raises questions about the dangers Moscow has brought on itself by its promotion of "federalism for export" in the case of Ukraine, especially since what Moscow has been seeking there was not devolution of powers from Kiev but in fact separatism and a change of state borders.

In a commentary on Politcom.ru, Konstantin Yemelyanov notes that the organisers of these actions "undoubtedly are trying to use the Kremlin's weapon against it: not long ago, for example, the theme of the federalisation of Ukraine was the public basis of Russian policy toward a neighbouring country, and the Russian foreign ministry highlighted all the benefits" of such arrangements.

"A political provocation which formally does not contradict Russian law but hits the weak places of Russian public policy is becoming one of the types of political participation and self-expression for the opposition," Yemelyanov says. For those now in power who remember 1991, that is a truly frightening spectre.

From Siberia to Kaliningrad: the fledgling independence movements gaining traction in Russia | World news | theguardian.com


Oh my, Russian "federalization snake" that it is trying to unleash on Ukraine may just bite it back. And this could just be he beginning.

 

[pmaitra]

How can Russia rival EU when it appears that it might even break-up?



From Siberia to Kaliningrad: the fledgling independence movements gaining traction in Russia | World news | theguardian.com


Oh my, Russian "federalization snake" that it is trying to unleash on Ukraine may just bite it back. And this could just be he beginning.

Pure State Department propaganda.

Putin's popularity is so high, than the western media is hell bent on convincing everyone that the Sun rises form the west.

Keep posting your weirdest wishes. My predictions are that extreme right-wingers are going to seize power in certain countries of the EU, and the EU is going to become a paper tiger. The opportunity to break up Russia was over the day Putin was appointed the PM, by Yeltsin. At least, he did one thing right.

 

[Otm Shank]

true pmaitra. I have a few Russian aquiantences from other forums and some social games. Theyve always been anti putin/gov and pessimistic about the Russian economy but after this flagrant attack on their sphere of influence they seem to trust putin 100% now and believe in embracing only russian businesses/products

 

[asianobserve]

Pure State Department propaganda.

Putin's popularity is so high, than the western media is hell bent on convincing everyone that the Sun rises form the west.

Keep posting your weirdest wishes. My predictions are that extreme right-wingers are going to seize power in certain countries of the EU, and the EU is going to become a paper tiger. The opportunity to break up Russia was over the day Putin was appointed the PM, by Yeltsin. At least, he did one thing right.

I did nit invent that story. I plucked it from Guardian site.

Expect more calls for loser ties with Russia in the form of federation in these distant parts of Russia. Ironically, the idea is coming from Putin himself in Ukraine.

 

[pmaitra]

I did nit invent that story. I plucked it from Guardian site.

Expect more calls for loser ties with Russia in the form of federation in these distant parts of Russia. Ironically, the idea is coming from Putin himself in Ukraine.

As I said, you picked it up from the State Department, well sort of.

Here is a comment about the author of the article:

Kaiama
15 August 2014 7:40pm

Paul Goble, a longtime specialist on ethnic and religious issues in Eurasia, currently prepares daily reports on developments in that region for his blog, Window on Eurasia. Paul has worked at the Central Intelligence Agency, the Foreign Broadcast Information Service, he served as Special Assistant for Soviet Nationalities and Special Advisor for Soviet Nationality and Baltic Affairs at the US Department of State, he was the director of research and director of communications and technology at Radio Liberty/Radio Free Europe, and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He has taught at the University of Maryland, George Washington University, Georgetown University, the Institute of World Politics, the University of Tartu, and Audentes University in Tallinn. Trained at Miami University and the University of Chicago, he is the editor of seven volumes on ethnic and religious issues in. He currently lives in Staunton, Virginia, and can be reached via email at [email protected]

Pure propaganda from the USA

Didn't have to work too hard.

The USSR had its own problems, and those problems are gone. The Russian Federation, in the wake of introducing "democracy," introduced vote-for-money concept, and a whole bunch of foreign NGOs, in the Yeltsin years. Putin is correcting that now.

Here is another interesting comment.

Robert Sandlin
15 August 2014 9:32pm

Now Russians you see what letting those Western NGO's into Russia in the 1990's has done. They've been busy building a 5th column to destroy Russia. Its going to take hard patriotic work to root them out. But if you want to save Russia you have to do it. Now with the Ukraine crisis the West is turning up the heat. Trying every weapon of Russophobia they have. They are scared that Putin will be successful in destroying the petrodollar and their control in the world. So they will do anything to stop that. And try to destroy Russia in doing it. You have to fight back. Control your 5th column. And turn the tables on them. There are separatist movements throughout the West. Start supporting them. If the West is busy fighting fires in their own countries they won't have the time to start fires in Russia.

As much as you hate Putin and wish Russia suffer, as long as Putin is in charge, he will not sell out the interests of the nation, bow to the banking, oil, and arms cartels, or get swayed by an opportunity to take a photo-shoot at the apple-and-cabbage-muncher summit, err, I mean G-7 summit. Putin is, in my eyes, incorruptible, and a true democratic leader. Don't believe me? Look below. I could post from some reliable Russian source, but even a western source says so:

 

[pmaitra]

true pmaitra. I have a few Russian aquiantences from other forums and some social games. Theyve always been anti putin/gov and pessimistic about the Russian economy but after this flagrant attack on their sphere of influence they seem to trust putin 100% now and believe in embracing only russian businesses/products

I know many Russians. There is one person who seemed to dislike Putin. Rest all of them, two of them minorities, voted for Putin.

I have Russian friends from Moscow, Tatarstan, Novosibirsk, Omsk, Tuva. They all love and admire Putin.

After the Yeltsin years, Russians absolutely trust the future of their country in Putin's hands.

All the anti-Russia reports seem to come out of the west, and have little to do with reality.

 

[asianobserve]

This is a glimpse of the real nature of Russian-Chinese relations, it's a strategic competition not coalition:

But signs that the deal was unraveling emerged in April. Then, last month, a Chinese company appeared on the scene. Beijing Urban Construction Group has stepped up to provide the $1 billion originally pledged by Rosneft. Another Chinese firm is apparently ready to invest in Kyrgyzstan's second airport. Did Western sanctions play a part in Rosneft's unability to finalize the acquisition? That is unclear, but analysts speculate that the sanctions may be having repercussions for the company's international plans.

China's consistent multi-billion dollar spending spree on regional gas pipeline projects has transformed the geopolitical status of Central Asia, once seen as Russia's exclusive zone. Moscow is keen to reassert its presence in the weaker states, but it has found itself caught up in the complex regional politics. Take Kyrgyzstan, where Moscow was linked to a violent coup in April 2010 that led to bloody inter-ethnic conflict. Four years later, Gazprom finds its interests in Kyrgyzstan threatened by a spat with Uzbekistan.

China is doing its own expansion towards Russian borders (and the West on the other side). Russia is toasted!