BBC Monitoring Western "pressure" on CIS states makes them turn to Moscow - paper Source: Nezavisimaya Gazeta, Moscow, in Russian 21 Nov 02
Russia's heavyweight broadsheet Nezavisimaya Gazeta has said that officials from some CIS countries which believe they are under pressure from the West in one form or another have started visiting Moscow more frequently. Russia's influence within the CIS has increased considerably, the paper said. Some analysts have started talking about the possibility of creating a powerful union of states under Russia's administration, on whose borders a new "iron curtain" will be formed, according to the paper. The following is an excerpt from a report in Russian newspaper Nezavisimaya Gazeta on 21 November:
Every foreign policy step by [Belarusian President] Alyaksandr Lukashenka becomes a sensation nowadays. His image personifies the creation of a new "iron curtain" on the border between two worlds - the world subordinate to the West and the world ruled by Russia. It is revealing that essentially without any legal grounds for this, the West has deemed eight people from the Belarusian top state leadership "not suitable for travelling abroad". Europe and the United States have started to check hypercritically the documents of a great many political figures and statesmen from CIS countries. And these have started being drawn to Russia... [ellipsis as published].
Last week Vladimir Putin offered tea to his Ukrainian counterpart. And next week, the Belarusian president will pay a friendly visit to the Kremlin. Moreover, like Kuchma, Lukashenka has arranged the meeting with Putin by telephone... Minsk is equating the actions of the EU with "the actions of fascist Germany, which in the name of combating communism burnt down cities and killed people". Against this backdrop Lukashenka's expected arrival in Moscow is seen as the action of a man driven into a corner. According to certain reports, Minsk is prepared to transfer a number of very attractive installations in the oil and gas infrastructure to Russia today on terms acceptable to it, although earlier the Belarusian authorities had been refusing to include the question of the privatization of such enterprises on the agenda of the talks with Russia.
The European structures and Western democracies that have politically isolated (de jure and de facto) a number of regimes within the CIS that the West finds objectionable have so far achieved the opposite of what they expected: All the CIS presidents and their entourages, perceiving pressure from the West in one form or another, have started visiting Moscow more frequently. As a result, Russia's influence within the CIS has broadened considerably. To such an extent that certain analysts have started talking about the possibility of creating a powerful union of states under Russia's administration, on whose borders, as in Soviet times, an "iron curtain" will be formed. In this case, Russian foreign policy will be given an additional, very serious trump card in talks with the EU and the United States.