Russia far from isolated in non-West community

... policy. Since the disintegration of the Soviet Union, Russia has had two strategies, one official and the other held in reserve. The official strategy was aimed at integrating Russia, on its own terms, into the Euro-Atlantic community, i.e. expanded West. The G8 membership symbolized that. The other was to integrate former Soviet republics into a full-fledged Eurasian Union: an economic, political, and security alliance, a Moscow-led power center in Eurasia. Today, the first strategy is a complete failure; the second one, limited to economics and without Ukraine, qualifies as only a most moderate success. ...