Visas as Nails in the CIS Coffin
Russia has given three-months’ notice of withdrawing from the Bishkek Agreement on Visa-Free Movement of Citizens within the CIS. This news has, for some reason, triggered a not-so-positive reaction from most, if not all, Commonwealth members, but none of them really seems to have been surprised. I would not call this a sensational piece of news. The point is everything is gradually beginning to fall into its own place.
It is not a question of Russia immediately introducing visas for all the other CIS countries: this would have been simply ludicrous. Yet, the Turkmenbashi has already done this, as have the leaders of Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Kazakhstan, so far within their own region. So what we see is a tendency which reveals as best as it can that the Commonwealth of Independent States in the shape it was drawn up by Moscow and some other capitals has not come into being. It has not become the Soviet Union’s legal successor and has not preserved Moscow’s complete and unquestioned dominance in the post-Soviet theater in the political, military, and financial spheres; nor has it guaranteed Moscow long continuance of its existing economic dominion. In other words, no single space has been formed, which could later lead to the formation of either a unified state or some kind of confederation. And then it suddenly became clear that Russia was in reality not interested in an ephemeral Commonwealth which might become in the course of time even more ephemeral than the Commonwealth of Nations. Russia has interests of its own, which it defends with all the means it has, including a possible visa regime. All the rest is history and lyricism. The mother country will never seek the advice of its former colonies about its decisions, even of those who try today to look as its apologist like Aliaksandr Lukashenka, for example. Moscow observers think it possible that Moscow will from now on blackmail the most disobedient republics, threatening them with visas.
In post-Soviet conditions, as Leonid Kuchma said, assessing the situation quite correctly, abolishing the no-visa regime will also make it impossible to form a free trade area. The former USSR is not North America, where Mexico and the US enjoy strict visa regulations and free trade at the same time. In our case, there will be neither free trade nor free movement of people and capitals as long as power in the Kremlin and across the Russian borders is still being held by leaders very Soviet (but in no way communist) in their heart of hearts.
Ukraine may have made a truly wise decision not to sign the Bishkek agreement, preferring to deal with each CIS country individually. Now we have perhaps every reason to say that another and by no means the weakest nail in the CIS’s coffin was driven not by Ukraine but, on the contrary, by Russia which had always spoke so often about friendship, partnership, equal rights, and integration, and is now talking about the terrorism that actually exists... due to Moscow’s “wise” policies in the last few years.
As to the new generations of post-Soviet residents, they are most likely to be utterly indifferent to whether this strange Commonwealth used to have at least some prospects.
