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Putin Says There Is No Going Back to USSR
Friday, June 14, 2002
(15:34)
Reuters

Image Credit: Gazeta.ru.

Putin’s statement came only two days after his meeting with Alexander Lukashenko in St.Petersburg. Their meeting lasted for over ten hours, and to all appearances, the two leaders failed to agree on many crucial issues, the main one being the establishment of the union parliament.

For the first time in the two years of his presidency Vladimir Putin has made an extremely harsh statement concerning the development of relations between Russia and neighbouring Belarus.

Ever since the mid-90s the two nations have nurtured ambitious integration plans; however, so far little progress has been made in that direction. In the meantime, the West eyed the Union with suspicion questioning the nature of ties between the Kremlin and the authoritarian regime of Alexander Lukashenko. In his Thursday statement Putin made it clear that Russia’s key priority is its relationship with the West. Belarus is important too, provided however, that the Union is built on Moscow’s terms.

On Thursday President Putin met with the personnel of Moscow’s Bakulev Cardiovascular Scientific Research Centre. At that meeting the Russian head of state made an unexpectedly harsh statement on the problems of post-Soviet integration, and in particular, on the prospects of the Russia-Belarus Union. In his speech he reproached the Belarusian leadership for wishing the Union to be “something like the USSR.” But there would be no return to the USSR, Putin said.

He noted that “one must not try to restore the USSR at the expense of Russia’s economic interests, since that will only intensify the centrifugal forces within the country and will weaken the Russian economy,” whereas our partners from Belarus are trying to “set up something in the likeness of the USSR.”
(More: Gazeta.ru News Source)
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Dan