EEU

From USA Today:

"Putin signs economic union deal with ex-Soviet states"

Russian President Vladimir Putin has signed a deal with his counterparts from Kazakhstan and Belarus to create an economic union. Moscow says the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU) of ex-Soviet states will create a shared market and help integrate economic policy, starting next year. Critics say the project is an attempt to revive part of the old Soviet Union.  Belarussian President Alexander Lukashenko predicted Ukraine would join the bloc eventually.  Russia had pressed for Ukraine to join while Viktor Yanukovych was in power as president, before his overthrow in February by opposition forces looking to build ties with the European Union instead. Relations have deteriorated sharply since then amid violent unrest in eastern Ukraine. The three presidents signed the agreement establishing the EEU at a meeting in the Kazakh capital, Astana. It will come into force on 1 January, once it has been ratified by the three countries' parliaments, and aims to guarantee free movement of goods, services, capital and labour, as well as co-ordinated policy in major economic sectors. Between them, the three states have a combined GDP of about $2.7tn (£1.6tn; 2tn euros) Mr Putin said the creation of the EEU had "epoch-making significance".  "This document is taking our countries to an absolutely new level of integration, fully preserving their state sovereignty," he said as he met his counterparts in Astana.  The three countries were "creating a powerful and attractive centre of economic development, a large regional market uniting more than 170 million people", he added. Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev said he saw the new union as "a bridge between the East and the West". Along with Ukraine under its new leaders, other former Soviet republics have refused to sign up for the union, although Armenia and Kyrgyzstan are considering membership. "We lost some along the way: I mean Ukraine," President Lukashenko said at the signing ceremony. "I am sure that sooner or later the Ukrainian leadership will realise where its fortune lies."

^ I think the EEU is going to be just as ineffective as the CIS has been. The CIS (Commonwealth of Independent States) was formed in 1991 when the Soviet Union collapsed and included every former Soviet Republic except: Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia (Georgia wanted a few years to join.) The CIS was supposed to be a way to integrate the economies and militaries of the different countries and yet it has done very little. It didn't stop the Russians from invading and occupying Georgia (Abkhazia and South Ossetia) or the Crimea (which caused both Georgia and the Ukraine to leave the CIS.) I remember when I was first studying in Russia and was working on my thesis for college (comparing the Soviet Union with the Russian Federation) and had a survey (in Russian) that I gave people. One of the questions asked was if they thought the CIS would ever be as effective as the USSR or if the USSR would ever return in any form or f they wanted it to. The majority of people wrote that they didn't understand what the CIS was or how it worked. The majority of people  (85% of those who responded) did say they wanted the old USSR back, but didn't think there could ever be the exact conditions that prevailed from 1922-1991. I think the EEU is just one more attempt to create a form of the old Soviet system due to nostalgia, but won't hold any real weight. Besides the CIS there have been numerous unions and organizations (ie GUAM, the the Union of Russia and Belarus, etc) Customs Union of Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Russia, the Collective Security Treaty Organization, made to entice the post Soviet states to join back together and all have no real power. ^

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-27619156