"More than his predecessor Medvedev, Putin has his sights set on the former Soviet states on Russia's borders. He has pushed through a customs union with Belarus and Kazakhstan, praising it as "an enormous single market of 165 million people with the free circulation of capital and labor." Putin's plan calls for the eastern economic club to become the nucleus of a "Eurasian Union," eventually to be joined by additional former Soviet states." reports Der Spiegel on May 30
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