interaction with regional security dynamics 39 CPEC is in the interest of the broader region. 195 The best way to achieve this is to give India and other regional actors a stake in its success. 2.3. Compatibility with Russian security interests Russia officially endorsed EEU–Belt cooperation in May 2015, after a period of nearly two years of assessment, through a joint statement signed by President Vladimir Putin and President Xi Jinping. 196 To obtain a better understanding of what shifted in Russia’s strategic calculus, it is essential to briefly discuss Russia’s geoeconomic orientation more broadly. Russian intentions to balance its economic trade dependence between Europe and Asia have been mooted since at least 1996. 197 The Ukraine crisis, which was followed by sanctions, economic fallout and a sharp decline in oil prices, has accelerated Russia’s ‘turn to the East’. This policy seeks to improve economic integration with the Asia­Pacific region and, in relative terms, decrease Russia’s dependence on the West. So far, China’s large economy has been the focal point of this policy, as the other major economies in the Asia-Pacific region, Japan and South Korea, are US treaty allies, and trade with ASEAN is negligible. China has steadily been working on integration with Russia through bilateral and multilateral institutions since the 1990s. The Belt may yet be another platform to further operationalize cooperation and integration between China and Russia, and discussions on the specifics of EEU–Belt cooperation are ongoing—albeit slowly. 198 Moreover, Russia believes that the world order is moving towards economic and security macro-blocs. 199 To its west, Russia sees the EU and the TPIP; to its east, it meets the TPP; and to its southeast, Russia faces the BRI. With the exception of the BRI, Russia finds itself excluded from all the other aforementioned economic blocs. The EEU, formally founded in 2014, is intended to serve Russia’s own geoeconomic interests in much the same way. 200 The creation of the EEU is the end result of numerous attempts to create a customs union and a single economic space since the early 1990s. Formally, it is the successor of the Eurasian Economic Commission(EEC) and its Customs Union. The EEU has the objective to give Russia and the former Soviet states of Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Ukraine a degree of economic latitude and sovereignty in world economic affairs. As a Russia-led initiative, it both results from and strengthens Russia’s continued leverage over these former Soviet states. This has always been a top foreign policy priority for Russia. The 195  Liu, Z.,‘India’s political goals hinder cooperation with China on“Belt, Road”’, Global Times , 3 July 2016. 196 ‘Russia, China agree to integrate Eurasian Union, Silk Road, sign deals’, Russia Today, 8 May 2015,<www. rt.com/business/256877-russia-china-deals-cooperation/>. See also Chinese Ministry of Commerce website,<policy. mofcom.gov.cn/section/gjty!fetch.action?id=TOEL000080>. The objectives described in the document are, however, limited in particulars. The agreement was bilateral—the other EEU members did not sign this agreement. See the EEU’s 2015 document‘Transport’ on the technical details of this integration,<http://www.eurasiancommission. org/ru/Documents/transport_eng.pdf>, pp. 42–45. The Russian intellectual community is largely supportive of the Belt and linking with the EEU: based on authors’ conversations with multiple experts in Moscow, Oct. 2016. See also Spanger, H. J.,‘Russia’s turn eastward, China’s turn westward: cooperation and conflict on the new silk road’, Valdai Papers no. 47(May 2016). 197 Evgeny Primakov, Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs in 1996–98, already had the idea of a Russia–India–China triangle in 1996. See also Lavrov, S.,‘The rise of Asia, and the eastern vector of Russia’s foreign policy’, Russia in Global Affairs, 12 July 2006,<http://eng.globalaffairs.ru/number/n_6865>. Notably, Viet Nam has become the first country to have signed a free trade agreement with the EEU. See Eurasian Economic Commission,‘Free Trade Agreement between the Eurasian Economic Union and Vietnam to enter into force on October 5’, 19 Aug. 2016,<http://www. eurasiancommission.org/en/nae/news/Pages/19-08-2016.aspx>. 198 One Russian expert noted that Russia could not handle both dealing with the fallout of the Ukraine crisis and competing with the Belt’s advances—the Belt was too large and ambitious to ignore. Conversation with authors, Moscow, Oct. 2016. 199 Duchâtel, M. et al.,‘Eurasian integration: caught between Russia and China’, European Council on Foreign Relations, 7 June 2016,<http://www.ecfr.eu/article/essay_eurasian>. 200 While the organization itself is officially abbreviated to EEAU on its website, academic discourse tends to use EEU more frequently.