Russia and the Eurasian Economic Union : Conflicting Incentives for an Institutional Compromise

The Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) is the first and relatively successful attempt to establish strong multilateral institutions of post-Soviet regional integration. The EAEU has greater scope of supranationalism compared to all previous post-Soviet integration projects and the Union's multilateral institutions are based on the formal recognition of equal status of all the members. However, such a union is unlikely to promote the Russian economic and political dominance in the region, at least compared to what would be attainable through bilateral deals. On contrary, the post-soviet countries got opportunities to act more independently from Russia. We argue that it was the Ukrainian crisis in spring 2014 and the need to promote the domestic image of Russia as “great power” that created incentives for Russian leadership to accept institutional compromises necessary to initiate the Eurasian Economic Union