Putin’s Eurasian Union Looks Like a Bad Deal, Even for Russia

Vladimir Putin calls it a counterweight to the world’s economic superpowers. On Thursday he agreed with the presidents of Kazakhstan and Belarus to form a new trading bloc, the Eurasian Economic Union, with plans for the former Soviet republics of Armenia and Kyrgyzstan to join soon. “The just-signed treaty is of epoch-making, historic importance,” Putin said at a ceremony in the Kazakh capital of Astana.

Alas for Putin, the new bloc comes nowhere near the big leagues. Even after Armenia and Kyrgyzstan enter, its total gross domestic product—about $2.6 trillion—will be less than one-fifth that of the European Union or the U.S. and less than one-third of China’s. Russia will account for more than 80 percent of the bloc’s GDP and a similar share of its roughly 178 million population. Creation of the union “won’t really register on the radar of the global economy,” says Nicu Popescu, an analyst at the EU’s Institute for Security Studies in Paris.