A new USSR?

The Herald reports:

In what is sure to be seen as a bid to rebuild the Soviet Union, Vladimir Putin has floated the idea of a “Eurasion Union”.

Putin, who recently announced he will be running for president, said the union – made up of former Soviet states – would be similar to the European Union.

Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan were already going ahead with economic integration and will introduce unified market rules and regulations at the start of 2012, according to the Russian Prime Minister.

But Putin quickly deflected suggestions the union would be an attempt to rebuild the USSR.

“There is no talk about rebuilding the USSR in one way or another,” he told a Russian newspaper.

“It would be naive to try to restore or copy something that belongs to the past, but a close integration based on new values and economic and political foundation is a demand of the present time.”

I’m all for economic co-operation  but I do wonder how Putin’s Eurasian Union would cope with, for example, a Greece whose failure to pay their own way means all the other countries have to bail them out?

I’m guessing he’d send in the tanks and take over the country. Maybe this is what Germany should do with Greece – demand that Merkel be placed in charge until the Greek Government is running a surplus. If they say no, then kick them out of the Euro.