Financial Times.
The
US is trying to prevent Russia from recreating a new version of the
Soviet Union under the ruse of economic integration, Hillary Clinton
warned on Thursday.
“There is a move to re-Sovietise the region,” the US secretary of
state told a news conference in Dublin hours before going into a meeting
with her Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov.
“It’s not going to
be called that. It’s going to be called a customs union, it will be
called Eurasian Union and all of that,” she said, referring to various
iterations of a Moscow-backed plan to deepen economic ties with its
neighbours.
“But let's make no mistake about it. We know what the goal is and we
are trying to figure out effective ways to slow down or prevent it.”
Mrs Clinton said efforts at regional hegemony had been accompanied by new campaigns of repression from pro-Moscow regimes
throughout the former Soviet Union. Her tone signalled that the US was
rethinking its “reset” in relations with Russia, declared in 2009,
during which criticism of its human rights record has been muted and
Moscow appeared to have a freer hand in the former Soviet region.
