seven thirty am in moscow we're reviewing the week's top stories here on r.t. president medvedev orders an investigation into claims of election violations in last week's parliamentary vote after tens of thousands take to the streets across russia angry with the outcome of sunday's election. stepping out britain vetoes a pen european deal to save the euro in a move that many believe is the first of the u.k.'s first step towards exiting the union most e.u. members have agreed to control their budgets three states requiring consultations

with their parliaments first. libyan authorities asked the u.n. billions of dollars of assets claiming the war torn country doesn't have enough cash to implement reforms huge sums of money were seized by the west after sanctions were placed on libya's former leader. stay with us here on r t cross talk coming your way next.

and you can. follow in well the rostock on peter lavelle almost immediately after the collapse of the soviet union twenty years ago the commonwealth of independent states was established its original intent seen by many as a vehicle to witness the amicable divorce of the u.s.s.r. two decades on it is an organisation in search of a mission. to cross-talk the commonwealth of independent states i'm joined by stephen cohen here in the studio he's a professor of russian studies and history at new york university and in providence we crossed in a quiet petro he's a professor of politics at the university of rhode island all right this is crosswalks gentlemen so you can jump in anytime you want stephen you're in the

studio with me here in moscow let's talk about the significance of establishing the commonwealth of independent states after the soviet union collapses because ever since twenty years on there's the accusation that russia wants to rebuild the soviet union minus the baltic republics bad sometimes go first. bad lives the commonwealth of independent states c.i.s. was formed by yeltsin and kraft shook that then the leaders of russia and ukraine on december eighth one thousand nine hundred one when they abolished the soviet state because they knew there was a lot of opposition to it and they wanted to give the impression at that moment that they were really create imitation software it's already done communist version that's right a soft union. therefore they had no choice they had to present something to get this ratified by the various republics so it had very little legitimacy at the moment because people didn't understand what it was and kraftwerk immediately broke

legally many had with yeltsin that for example there would be a united army so you severed all the relations of the union and that left the c.i.s. if it was to exist to find new ways to reintegrate or integrate that was a big mistake if you had to in the union or if it was a good idea why sever all the positive integration well you know that's interesting because i mean if i go to a province i mean not all members of the soviet republics wanted the soviet union to end i think we have to remember that i think a lot of people definitely thought this was a wrong move and i'm thinking of the central asian republics that thought you know you know we got a pretty good gig here going with moscow they pay for everything we don't pay anything to them i mean this is one of the issues that you know and i will talk about it later the program the ambivalence even russians have about the c.i.s. because who pays for it ultimately go ahead. well that's one issue and another one is that there's always been a great deal of ambivalence toward the union and recreating the union

among many of the other republics for example people anticipated a better life in ukraine but they didn't get exactly what they hoped for out of independence and that has led to friction within ukraine itself as well as certain other regions i think the c.i.s. has well as stephen mentioned. came out of of a bad birth but what was left was what we didn't have and didn't have any institutional framework for was the spiritual and cultural connections that remained and so people are looking for and i think to some extent although to a lesser extent today because of generational changes that have already occurred they're already beginning they still want to have some sort of connectivity to other people in other republics stephen i mean one of the interesting things is

this conductivity that we've talked about here is that i remember there was a few years ago that vladimir putin lamented the end of the soviet union and i think is one of the most misquoted or misunderstood quotes in modern history because he said one of the great tragedies of the twentieth century was the collapse of the soviet union but everyone forgot to read the next five sentences because millions of russians found themselves on the other side of another border millions of russians fell upon themselves in poverty and in despair and and the reason i brought this up because nicolas is you know they need to some kind of connections i mean there are so many russians and russian speaking people in ukraine for example and having a new border was not what people wanted ok maybe they didn't want to be part of the soviet union that's one thing but being separated from each other completely is another let's be heretical it's not even clear they didn't want to be part of the soviet union remember in march only a few months before the abolition of the soviet state there was a referendum. nine republics took place there was a very large turnout seventy six percent voted for the union the cultural point

that nikolai makes are very very important but the more important thing is when the rest of the world was economically integrated in europe in particular suddenly what had been a soviet integrated economic common space was blown apart for no rational reason that's what plunged people at the beginning in the poverty along with the shock therapy now when you've seen then that's the kind of the logic of the economic integration driving itself well if there is a more there's a political resistance but the logic of economics is formidable now suddenly you have two proposals by putin for example one for a common trade a common space analogous to the european union and now his new idea for you are always union in itself part of this is political but i think the economic logic behind reintegrate integration is an excuse in this capable particularly of globalization actually means and right maybe what do you think about that because one of the one of the criticisms of the c.i.s.

is that it tries to be too many things at one time it focuses on trade economic security there's some elements of the military but obviously in a sense of self defense nothing like nato whatsoever and really they and they can in the criticism is that it wants to be a european union want to be but probably the commonwealth of nations you know would be able to get the u.k. to experience is probably more to the mark but still the criticism is that it wants to be all things to all people all the time and that makes it very muddled. no doubt but that is the nature of these sorts of transnational integrative processes. if you look and put in address this in his remarks after his. article he pointed out that this is a multi-tiered multilayered process and it has been moving forward only for the about the last ten years and i would say in

a much shorter amount of time only about the last five years with any concrete direction the. european union came went through several metamorphosis from a coal and steel community to examine exactly then to something even more abbreviated i learned and but what guiding it all was a vision a vision of the future product that was to be a united europe and that i think is what putin has laid out for people in his recent remarks namely that the end goal is something that we should all be keeping in mind stephen on this and the same kind of comment that nicol i was making there was that you know for twenty years now we've seen independent countries that used to be part of the soviet union and i'm reflecting upon what you a nickel i had to say is that twenty years after the fact because of globalization you actually need to be part of a greater whole because going it on your own is simply impossible and then we think

of the united states and china and the other and bric countries they are actually interesting into the world why should this neighborhood integrate as well in a place that used to be called the soviet union or they should i mean the logic is that should we've left out one dimension the political dimension and it's not only the political dimension within these countries who want to protect their sovereignty it's the fact that this area has become an arena of competition between the united states and russia and that is an obstacle in itself but this supports nikolai's point of view. look what's happened just to take one small example kyrgyzstan the new elected leadership of kyrgyzstan has said openly we are staying with russia you know why we're all curious people speak russian the culture is shared of course there's an economic component of the energy but for defense even though there was an american air base there this new independent state needs russia they don't know what's going to happen in afghanistan when the united states withdraws they're going to need russia so the logic is economic it's military it's

cultural and ultimately unless the united states does what he tried to do for example in ukraine in georgia it's political my own feeling is we should stand aside and let the natural process of these evolve because then you'll get something consensual that won't be forced if it's forced and isn't going to work in the end it will be sensual it i think is very interesting i think i might go back to you if you think there is if it's forced and steven brings a very good point here then people walk away from it ok and i for i find it very very interesting because if you look at western media it's russia trying to recreate the soviet union right you're trying to push around its neighbors its aggressive foreign policy which is all absolutely nonsense of russia's foreign policy is intensely descents of i would say and but because it is defensive it actually becomes more attractive in a very ironic way because you know all of these countries have different experiences with the russian empire then with the soviet union and stephen brought

up the next point now international competition so you have to find yourself a nice in the community in the neighborhood. quite right and i think there is this shared history which western analysts don't often don't give enough don't pay enough attention to but i would i would add one factor which is an obvious one but it's worth. underscoring geography geography plays a very important role and if the if this if this region is the heartland of eurasia over the world and then i would say that russia itself is the heartland of this particular region and all the connective ties. for export and import of goods and trade flows of people lead through russia but i would add one bit of warning although there is a logic to globalization that seems inevitable and and is quite attractive

i would not expect that globalization and integrating the economic structures of these various countries will lead to quick benefits i think it will it all rather be a process of integration over time which will yield benefits and cause other problems it will require a much deeper extension of integrative processes also in the legal arena as well as the economic arena and it's a difficult process as we now see with the e.u. we should push you mention very difficulty that we are looking at the e.u. example and learning the lessons of what not to do well let's hope for the best ok all right gentlemen we're going to a short break and after that short break we'll continue our discussion see how you .

if you could want. twenty years ago in the largest country. to certain places of. say. what had been more treatment the beach began a journey. where did it take them. to. choose.

a. world from the finance technology innovation all the moves developments from around russia we've got the future covered. welcome back to cross talk i'm getting a bill to remind you we're talking about the commonwealth of independent states. and you can. look at nickel if i go back to one

province i think one of the interesting things and that's what's really misunderstood even by a lot of russians actually about the c.i.s. is that it's all based on by lateral agreements so russia will have an agreement with kazakhstan classics and has a bilateral back with russia but there are very few c.i.s. instruments because this is was done intentionally to be very decentralized because of the memory of the soviet union and presumably the memory of the russian empire itself so it's really what you put into it is what you get out of it for example georgia left of its own on its own because of the conflict that it started in south of thirty in august two thousand and eight and it went on its own way isolated in the neighborhood because it doesn't have the same kind of agreements that it would used to have through the c.i.s. so i guess i'll go it's a long way of me saying there are actually some benefits to it it just depends how

much you want to put into it. very true but if the instruments that have now been put in place to create a single economic space are to thrive then they do eventually have to work on the type of arrangements which the e.u. as taken forty years or more to work on namely to have some sort of weighted voting which i think by the way they're working on and to basically have an ability to make decisions go forward without any one nation vetoing them i think this is a very complicated multilayered jigsaw puzzle that's the way to think of it and different parts of it are going to integrate more smoothly than others probably the part that's going to be the hardest to integrate and again we see this from the example of europe is the military component where the europeans themselves have

often thought about having some sort of small independent battalion or a western european union but it always remains moribund whether or not the c.i.s. or the instruments i almost look at the c.i.s. as a as a transitional vehicle out of which very good new instruments with new names will come and take stephen one of the things that's interesting i'm going to be counter-intuitive do it so many people think about the c.i.s. is that russia will even show a lot of hesitation because it doesn't want to pay for everything all of the time and one of the things one of the things that's so misunderstood about the soviet union is that the soviet russia the russian part of the soviet union was the primary it had the purse purse strings it paid for of many many things a good example is here when the soviet union collapsed its most sophisticated refining sector it found itself in beirut ok and we know all kinds of problems that russian the roots of had over energy because russia doesn't have the refineries it

was on the other side of the border when that border. was changed twenty years ago though they solve those problems on t.v. you can't just rely on value i said if you does it make it easy ok what we're asking is whether large parts of the former soviet union are in the process of reintegrating it could be political i think that would be the end result and that's less likely economically culturally as nicholai said we've left out one thing just briefly mentioned there are a lot of intermarriage among these people and there are children who don't want to belong to just one they want to belong to several and the whole business of getting passports and visas to visit grandparents is ridiculous because these barriers are being taken i disagree with a couple things nicole i thought or maybe you said you didn't think there'd be any instant benefits or russia can offer an immediate benefits subsidized energy that's extremely important to using the energy as a political weapon i thought we got over that not years out of that's part of creating a common economic territory each republic contributes former republic and the other

thing is really because i disagree with you on this steve because i think one for what it is i know it is unusual i know one of the things is that you know i think that you know when you look at russia's energy policy is very intensely based on geopolitical interests because you know if you look at our media a close russian russian ally they pay market world prices stand ukraine has to do that and i don't know that they think it's interesting they tried it it didn't work well with them and you have a they have a differential pricing policy for their energy yes because if i see no need for reasons i don't consider that a particularly onerous thing but i disagree with nickel on one thing well i don't think i mean i got i don't think the main problem is going to be military world and learning from the european union union is the main problem is going to be currency they are they going to have the single currency is there going to be a single bank i mean one of the cool reasons we have the crisis we have a date it's a small reason but it's one reason they can't fix it is there's no central european bank with the power to regulate the currency now is that going to happen here

that's going to be a big. a stumbling block but without an agreement on a currency zone there's going to be big economic problems i think that's going to be will have a very first big i think we don't have a nickel i don't you think there's already an unofficial currency zone here because somebody these countries i mean i've traveled through these what is the c.i.s. and you could use rubles everywhere ok so a de facto are really exist i mean one thing i do ask you nicole i want to in again if we look at the european union one of the issues that the european union faces in a very big way that it's labor markets is that in different parts of the european union there are different standards of development ok you have much more sophisticated north and less sophisticated south that could be that the same issue with c.i.s. countries as well which you agree i would say that. there are two points to what stephen mentioned one is the. the central bank issue is one specifically that video of recently addressed saying that we recognize

this as an inadequacy in the european attempts to resolve their crisis and and hopefully we can learn i think the difficulty of the most advanced aspect of this integration the bill russian russian union very often founders on that very issue so it's a laugh to be it's a good test case to see where they had with that and whatever model they develop we might be a model that works for for the rest of the. for the rest of the. c.i.s. . ok. ok it's interesting here you go to stephen here and stephen. what's what's your sense here you know it does russia really want to go down this path because in a geopolitical sense you know we you mentioned something very important here is the geopolitical competition we have always wanted very interesting is that you know ukraine's going to the west you kazakhstan's going to china and one of the things i think is quite logical it's forgotten is that these countries don't go anywhere

they're right where they are and they're going to stay right where they are and you really have to develop a good neighborhood policy and we've seen tensions which because of frozen conflicts because of what a box for example is wanted is nice that exists there is another one of them and this is where the c.i.s. actually can play a role be an immediate role because you don't have a hedge amount of power there one of the one of the reasons i oppose nato expansion and other of the united states was it discourage some of the smaller states have an establishing good relations with the russians instead they punch russia in the nose and want to try to hide behind nato and we saw in august in two thousand and eight that that was a failed policy right i mean nato is not going to come to the rescue at least so we think of these really they rescue libyans and they say that's ok they actually make peace again i come back to the point to me earlier there are natural been beneficial processes at work russia itself is divided there are many russians i know who prefer solzhenitsyn's version of a new union or

a new space that is includes only sloss you know what that means that would mean russian dollar rules ukraine and the western part of kazakhstan but not as a buy off of kazakhstan precise unflattering is in favor of the new union he was thinking that the slav half of this country other russians are more ecumenical but let's be serious racism overt racism is growing in russia absolutely this is a popular force working against this type of integration this reasoning in the street i would. giving away our money to the to the caucus why should we give it to them for you and all the rest so there are a lot of complex issues here and in the end in the end it will involve two things at least successful wise leadership on the part of russia and the former republics and the united states not to meddle in the process then i think we're going to malign process and in the end those former republics that want to join will join and if it works those who didn't join will probably join later if they see anything you say if we look at going christan for example because i believe we see the past

leadership right there the is a small country and it plays different major powers off against each other sometimes and it's not a good idea because they can alienate both countries the united states and russia i mean to to what degree can the cia step in and say look you know we can our security link is far more important to all of us collectively because a country like that that goes has chaos russia is the one that pays the highest price or one of them because of you know you have exits of people you have immigrant problems you have unemployment and stephen brought up a very good point here is the level of racism does increase here because of lack of opportunity and these in the poor countries of the c.i.s. integration can actually help reverse that were invest there instead of coming to moscow to work for example. well i think i think it at this stage of or of the unions integration it that would be problematic i think there'd be a lot of as stephen mentioned there be

a lot of opposition to that. but the example of kyrgyzstan is interesting on another level because the newly elected president went out of it what his way it seems to me to rios of firm his commitment to a closer integration with russia and to distance himself from the possible investment that americans are still interested in in the manassas air force base so i think that geography will over time dictate the natural outcomes i remember what i wanted to say earlier about the role of politics in setting the price of gas and natural resources i take it for granted not just for russia but for every major energy producer that politics is part of the price equation. it's a very good point stephen and i just finish off with you here but what do you think that you know ten years from now will the c.i.s.

be something that we be forgotten it will be replaced by something else or do you think it actually can have some beneficial meaning for its members i think the likelihood is that the coronations of the c.i.s. today will grow closer i don't foresee a political union it is not clear to me exactly what putin had in mind in the eurasian union whether he meant in the end the political union there may be forty one at a time gentlemen we'll see what that'll happen in ten years from many thanks my guest today and province and here in the studio and thanks to our viewers for watching us here at the phoenix time. and you can. see twenty years ago the largest country in the. disintegrator to.

see what had been trying. to teach began a journey. where did it take them.