IRKUTSK, March 4. /TASS/. Western European countries may join the Russian initiative on Eurasian security in the future, but to advance it, it would be useful to adopt a framework document, Andrey Bystritsky, chairman of the board at the Foundation for the Development and Support of the Valdai Discussion Club, told TASS.
Earlier, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov noted that President Vladimir Putin's initiative on Eurasian partnership is open to all countries on the continent.
"Strangely enough, the West might be interested in this initiative. Of course, this looks extremely unlikely now, since we are observing, rather, an aggravation of relations. The European Union is trying to organize something like a crusade against Russia, using Ukraine as the spearhead of this attack. But the European Union is not united. If some kind of firm formula for interaction between the Eurasian countries themselves appears at the level of Russia, the Central Asian countries, perhaps Pakistan, China, then after a certain pause it is unknown how the future will unfold. Therefore, one should not rule out a turn of Eurasian security to the countries of Western Europe as well," Bystritsky noted.
According to the expert, in order to promote initiatives on Eurasian security, it would be useful to adopt some kind of framework document.
"Then there will be a reason to treat this process differently, because for now this Eurasian procedure is institutionally quite slow. Therefore, the more institutions appear, the more reference points emerge that can be used, the easier it will be for anyone to make decisions. If there are few of these institutions, then you have no space for decision making," Bystritsky explained.
The Greater Eurasian Partnership is an initiative proposed by Putin in his address to the Federal Assembly in 2015. It involves the formation of a broad integration framework on the Eurasian continent. The foundation of the partnership is the promotion of a fair polycentric world order with equal and mutually beneficial economic cooperation. Lavrov reported that Russia and Belarus will present the Eurasian Charter of Diversity and Multipolarity for the 21st Century at the upcoming Minsk Security Conference. According to him, the document will lay the normative foundation for a new geopolitical reality.