Putin and CIS: what next?

By Alexei Vlasov, exclusively to VK

Vladimir Putin has confirmed again that former Soviet republics will be the top priority of Russia’s foreign policy under his new presidency. However, the actual implementation of this principle seems to be problematic: there is a wish, but there might be no instruments to fulfill it. There are necessary finance resources, but the state lacks qualified personnel.

So almost all the experts agree that a systematic analysis of Russia’s foreign political resources on all possible directions is needed: Central Asia, the South Caucasus, Ukraine. And for this a special center is needed. A similar experiment has already been carried out three years ago, when the ‘United Russia’ invited top-experts to analyze Russia’s optimal strategy towards Ukraine. The resulting document was of high quality, but in the conditions when all leading administrative bodies – the ruling ‘United Russia’ party, FM, the Presidential Administration – compete with one another such documents rarely reach their target. Russia’s establishment needs professional diplomats who would regard the CIS-related work not as an exile but as a privilege.

Similar expert groups should be formed now. In my opinion Sergei Naryshkin could become the best choice for a coordinator of such project, while all administrative bodies should prepare some articulate questions to the experts.

I believe that humanitarian projects should form the core of Russia’s new CIS policy, and these projects should include educational, scientific and youth aspects. Today the Rossotrudnichestvo is facing a much greater task that it used to.

This humanitarian aspect of Russia’s policy is most vital in the relations with Central Asia and the South Caucasus. In this case I believe the success could be achieved by granting broader powers to Russian establishments of higher education, as any bureaucratic pressure would destroy the idea.

The humanitarian and social aspect of all Russia political projects on the post-Soviet space should outweigh all the bureaucratic attempts to line everybody up ‘for the greater good of the state’, as civic activists are much more interested in the actual success of the humanitarian cooperation on the post-Soviet space that the bureaucrats.

 So now it is time to find out how the new President sees the problem.