>Russian President Vladimir Putin has proposed creating a "gas union" with Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan to establish a mechanism to ship natural gas between the three countries and to other nations, including China.

The mechanism:

What is mine is yours, what is yours is mine, and what is mine - don't touch.

• Russian proverb

I’m willing to bet neither want to be in partnership with Russia when they can do better without them.

And with Russias weakening global position both politically and militarily the threat of an invasion like Ukraine isn’t as likely, and they know they’d get support from western backed countries in the same event.

It’s an interesting time.

A Union until it’s not.

Will they also agree to sell their natgas to China and India at a discount?

As a member of Kazakhstan, I respectfully decline.

They fart in our general direction.

They could call it the pack-of-stan's

A Union, yes. It can be controlled by councils of workers, in a social manner. If it does well it could be it's own republic. Excellent, yes, a united soviet socialist repu.....wait a minute.

Union to Russian eyes only. Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, thanks but no thank you!

Take your upvote and go, Dad...

I proposed the same with my wife and my sheets

In other words, Russia needs help from Kazakhstan and Uzbrkistan to sell Russian gas.

We will notify Putin that we have held a referendum.

As a representative of the Uzbek delegation, I concur.

Putin has recorded your NOYES vote.

Putin: “So, you don't like the Soviet Union? How about Natural Gas Union?”

How do you know the kremlin is lying? They're lips re moving.

​

The kremlins words mean nothing, who in their right mind would want to do business with those who have eroded all their trustworthiness.

Don’t do it it’s a Trap!

So Russian politicians say that Kazakhstan is next and that it needs Denatzification and now they want a alliance?

I would expect that this union will be created. Of course , it will be one in name only , probably something like “ We will do our best to cooperate “. This way no-one has to actually do anything, Putin will not completely loose face and can parrot this “victory” in Russia. And Kazakh/Uzbek gas fields won’t start exploding for like no reason 🙂

high five!

Only a fool fights a war on two fronts and only a madman fights one on three. Putin could absolutely pull a Hitler here.

So bad that it made me laugh.

Have an upvote in the morning

Both countries are in a difficult spot. They have plenty of resources, but they're essentially land-locked, so exporting those resources is very difficult.

It would make sense that they're looking for neighbours to export through and for those the only one's with sea access for large scale global exports are Russia, China and (via the caspian sea) Iran. Not exactly the best partners to have.

The closest Chinese sea port is around 3000km from their border. The closest Russian sea port is less than 1000km away.

They have the choice of not exporting and staying poor or making a deal with one of the devils around them.

I don’t disagree here, however Kazakhstan at the very least has already been shipping oil/gas (I don’t specifically remember which natural resource it was) through to Azerbaijan, while I don’t like Azerbaijan too much (mainly their government) it can be a big step in the right direction away from Russia for multiple countries. Especially if Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan want to move away from Russias influence, and recent times suggest they do, especially Kazakhstan moving away from the Cyrillic alphabet in favour of the Latin alphabet.

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Oh Dear, Putins making a grab for Resources again...