| Russia already controls Belarus and would gain nothing from integrating it. While Russia has long term interests in the Ukraine, what it really wants is to split off the area of eastern Ukraine (the Crimean pennisula and surrounding area) which has a large proportion of ethnic russians. None of this is as important to Putin however, as the effort to restore the old boundaries of the Soviet Union in the caucasian area, and the BIG prize is the former soviet republic of Azerbaijan with the huge oil deposits in the Baku region. This is where Putin will come in conflict with Iran, which has major interests in this area, which borders northern Iran with its population of ethnic azerbaijanis. Just watch and see--within a year, it will be russia that is leading the international battle about iranian nuclear weapons. |
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