Inside Putin's Plan to Dominate the World's Oil and Gas Markets

Inside Putin's Plan to Dominate the World's Oil and Gas Markets:

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Inside Putin's Plan to Dominate the World's Oil and Gas Markets 
© Reuters

Vladmir Putin once called the collapse of the Soviet Union “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century.” But in Central Asia and Eastern Europe, a new economic union, aimed at collecting the scattered pieces of the Russian Empire, is growing. Should Putin’s Eurasian Union succeed by incorporating all of Central Asia and Eastern Europe minus the Baltic States and Balkans, Russia will effectively hold sway over some of the largest concentrations of natural gas, oil, and uranium in the world.

Kazakhstan, Russia, and Belarus are the inaugural signatories to this union, which has been rolling out incrementally since 2010. The union aims to hold all the perks of European Union membership by 2015, complete with a Schengen-style arrangement for visas and close military cooperation. If executed well, the union has the opportunity to bolster struggling Central Asian states by attaching them to the rising Russian economy."

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