At a signing ceremony in the Kazakh capital, Astana, on May 29, the presidents of Russia, Belarus, and Kazakhstan ratified the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU) into existence. An EEU modeled on the European Union was first mooted back in 1994 by Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev, but took off only after his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, seized upon its potential as a Moscow-centered, Asia-oriented alternative to the EU. 2014 July 1, Frank Jacobs, “Welcome to Stanistan”, in Foreign Policy, archived from the original on 03 Aug 2023: