Nazarbayev backs Putin’s Eurasian Union idea

ASTANA – Kazakhstani President Nursultan Nazarbayev supported Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s idea of a Eurasian Union in an October 25 Izvestia article.

Putin called for a “new integration project” for Eurasia in an October 4 Izvestia article, saying it could tie the Pacific Rim to Europe.

Nazarbayev wrote he had always considered Kazakhstan and Russia the “locomotives of Eurasian integration.”

Belarusian President Aleksandr Lukashenka also has supported Putin’s proposed Eurasian Union. Central Asian media criticised the idea, saying it sounded like an effort to restore the USSR.