What Do Central Asians Think About the Eurasian Economic Union?

Interviews | Economy | Central Asia

Dr. Zhanibek Arynov shares insights gleaned from his research into public perceptions of the EAEU in Armenia, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, a decade after the organization’s launch.

On January 1, 2015, the Eurasian Economic Union came into being with Russia, Belarus, and Kazakhstan its founding members, joined by Armenia the following day and Kyrgyzstan several months later.

The EAEU has often been characterized by analysts as just another Russian-dominated regional project mapping onto parts of the former Soviet Union, more important for the fact of its existence than its impacts on member-state economies. For its part, the union promised a transition to a functioning common market and the economic dividends that could yield.

The EAEU intended for 2025 – its 10th anniversary – to mark the end of its initial transition period. A decade on, analysts and commentators continued to grapple with the EAEU as an economic project and a political one.

But what do people inside the EAEU think about it? In a recent article published by Eurasian Geography and Economics, Dr. Zhanibek Arynov and Diyas Takenov set out to find answers to that question. In the following interview with The Diplomat’s Catherine Putz, Arynov – a researcher on Central Asian geopolitics and assistant professor at Nazarbayev University’s Graduate School of Public Policy – details their findings on the public perceptions of the EAEU in Armenia, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan.

How does the EAEU fit into the pantheon of multilateral projects across the former Soviet Union?

We know that there are many multilateral projects in the post-Soviet space. We also know that most of these projects are not very effective. In this plethora of different multilateral initiatives, the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) stands out as the most comprehensive supranational project.

From the very beginning, the EAEU has had its own governing institutions, including the Eurasian Economic Commission. In this regard, the five member states of the EAEU have ceded part of their sovereignty in the economic field to the Union.

In this sense, the EAEU can be considered a unique multilateral project compared to other initiatives in the post-Soviet space.

The Eurasian Economic Union intended for 2025 to mark the end of its initial transition period following its 2015 launch. What were the EAEU’s stated goals for its first decade?

Indeed, the EAEU identified 2025 as the end of its transition period, with official and strategic documents outlining several key objectives to be achieved by that date. Four priorities stand out.

First, the Union was expected to complete its transition to an effective common market. However, we see that the common market is still not functioning effectively, with recurring frictions between member states, including disputes involving all member states.

Second, it aimed to develop into a scientific and technological space fostering innovation. Despite some positive developments in the early stages, including the digitalization of certain sectors, the goal of creating a shared technological and innovation space appears increasingly uncertain, as member states struggle to keep pace with today’s rapid technological advances. Russia’s technological isolation makes this objective impossible to achieve.

Third, it sought to improve the quality of life across member states. In reality, there has been little qualitative progress in this regard. On the contrary, most member states today face greater socio-economic challenges than in the past, and, as our findings suggest, most citizens attribute these problems directly to EAEU membership.

Finally, the EAEU aspired to position itself as a global economic powerhouse and to develop diversified partnerships with external actors. While the Union has concluded several external trade agreements, it remains partially isolated, particularly as Western actors have largely refrained from formal engagement. Likewise, its interactions with China and the BRI [Belt and Road Initiative] have not advanced significantly beyond declaratory or framework agreements. Consequently, it is difficult to argue that the EAEU has emerged as a key player in the international system.

Your research focused on public perceptions of the EAEU in Armenia, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan. How did you go about gauging that? What are the challenges inherent to trying to capture public perceptions?

In this paper, we examine public perceptions of the EAEU across Armenia, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan. We argue that public perceptions matter even in contexts where public opinion has limited direct influence on formal political decision-making. Such perceptions can still shape the broader societal context within which policymakers operate and may indirectly inform policy choices.

From a methodological perspective, studying public perceptions is inherently challenging. This difficulty is amplified when the focus is on multilateral organizations, about which the general public often has limited knowledge. As a result, perceptions tend to be superficial, fragmented, or shaped by stereotypes, a pattern also observed in other regional integration contexts, including the European Union. Consequently, achieving a deeper understanding of public attitudes toward multilateral institutions requires careful methodological design.

A second set of challenges relates to data availability and quality. In this study, we combine original focus group discussions with existing public opinion surveys. However, in the context of Central Asia and Armenia, available survey data remain fragmented and inconsistent over time. There is a lack of regular, longitudinal polling on attitudes toward the EAEU, which limits the ability to track changes in public opinion. Moreover, many of the available surveys, particularly from the early years of the EAEU, were conducted by EAEU-affiliated institutions or government bodies, raising potential concerns about bias.

Finally, studying public perceptions on politically sensitive topics in non-democratic or semi-authoritarian contexts presents additional challenges, including the risks of censorship and self-censorship among respondents. These factors can affect both the reliability and the depth of the data collected.

Despite these constraints, our fieldwork experience across the selected countries was largely positive. We conducted a series of focus group discussions without encountering significant obstacles, and participants were generally open and engaged in discussing the topic. While the study is subject to the limitations outlined above, the data collection process itself proved feasible.

How was the EAEU initially perceived in the three countries you examined?

Public attitudes toward the EAEU have consistently been polarized, although this pattern is not unique in the context of regional integration projects. On the one hand, there is a group of “Eurasian supporters” who perceive the EAEU as beneficial for their respective countries. In Kazakhstan, for instance, the idea of Eurasianism has been prominently reflected in official discourse, and early public opinion polls suggested that a significant portion of the population aligned with these narratives, although such findings should be interpreted cautiously, given potential biases in early survey data. Similar patterns can be observed in Kyrgyzstan and Armenia, where segments of the population have supported, and continue to support, their countries’ participation in the Union.

On the other hand, all three countries have also exhibited a notable presence of “Eurasian skeptics,” who view the EAEU more critically. The existing literature generally identifies two broad strands of skepticism. The first is economic in nature, emphasizing concerns that membership may disadvantage national economies, particularly due to the perceived dominance of Russia within the Union. The second is political, focusing on the potential erosion of national sovereignty and the risks associated with deeper integration with Russia.

These competing narratives, supportive and skeptical, have coexisted across all three cases, albeit with varying intensity. In Kazakhstan, pro-EAEU sentiments appear to have been more prominent, especially in the early years of integration, compared to Kyrgyzstan and Armenia. By contrast, skepticism has been particularly pronounced in Armenia, where opposition to EAEU membership was visible even among political elites, including figures such as Nikol Pashinyan prior to his rise to power.

Overall, while public opinion has remained divided across the region, the relative balance between support and skepticism differs significantly across countries.

Did those perceptions change over time? What do you believe motivated these changes in perceptions of the EAEU?

As noted above, the fragmented nature of available public opinion data makes it difficult to systematically trace changes in public perceptions of the EAEU over time. Nevertheless, existing surveys, complemented by our focus group discussions conducted across the three countries, point to a clear trend: positive perceptions of the EAEU have declined significantly.

While the core narratives underpinning skepticism remain largely unchanged, their intensity has increased compared to the early years of the Union. In particular, economic grievances have become more pronounced. Many participants in our focus groups attributed current socio-economic challenges directly to EAEU membership, suggesting a growing perception of the Union as economically detrimental. This reflects a broader pattern of mutual dissatisfaction among member states. For example, participants in Kyrgyzstan frequently criticized Kazakhstan for what they described as arbitrary and recurrent border closures, while Kazakhstani respondents voiced similar concerns regarding Russia. In Armenia, economic grievances were also directed toward Russia, alongside broader dissatisfaction with the functioning of the Union.

Another recurring issue, particularly in Armenia and Kyrgyzstan, concerned the treatment of labor migrants in Russia, which respondents interpreted as evidence of the EAEU’s limited effectiveness in ensuring the free movement of labor. Overall, our findings reveal a strong prevalence of economically grounded criticism, which can be partly explained by a widening gap between the high expectations associated with the Union’s creation and its perceived practical outcomes. Similar expectation-reality gaps have been documented in other regional integration contexts, including the European Union.

In addition to economic concerns, sovereignty-related anxieties have become increasingly salient. These concerns have been significantly amplified by the broader geopolitical context, particularly following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Conducted in mid-2023, our focus groups captured this heightened sensitivity. In Kazakhstan, Russia is increasingly perceived as a potential threat to national sovereignty, while in Armenia, dissatisfaction is shaped by the perception that Russia failed to meet its security commitments during the conflict with Azerbaijan. Although these issues are not directly linked to the EAEU as an institution, public perceptions of the Union are nevertheless filtered through broader attitudes toward Russia and regional security dynamics.

Taken together, these trends indicate a marked deterioration in public perceptions of the EAEU across all three countries, driven by both economic disillusionment and heightened geopolitical concerns.

Did anything surprise you in conducting this research?

Overall, most of the findings presented in this paper are not particularly surprising, as existing scholarship on the EU and other regional integration projects has already pointed to similar patterns and expectations. In this sense, our results largely confirm broader insights from the literature on public attitudes toward regional organizations.

One finding that did stand out, however, concerns the relative strength of withdrawal preferences. Our analysis suggests that, somewhat unexpectedly, calls for exiting the EAEU were more pronounced among participants in Kazakhstan than in Armenia. This contrasts with our initial expectations, as we anticipated stronger exit-oriented sentiments in Armenia given the country’s heightened political and security tensions with Russia.

While Armenian participants indeed expressed substantial criticism of the EAEU, explicit support for withdrawal remained comparatively limited. We interpret this pattern in light of Armenia’s continued dependence on Russia as a perceived security guarantor, as well as skepticism regarding the feasibility of alternative geopolitical alignments. Although the Armenian government intensified its criticism of Russia in 2023-2024, including distancing itself from the CSTO and signaling interest in closer cooperation with the EU, many participants viewed a potential shift toward the EU as politically and practically unrealistic. Concerns about the country’s size, vulnerability, and the potential costs of such a strategic reorientation further reinforced this cautious stance. As a result, a significant share of Armenian respondents favored remaining within the EAEU while advocating for internal reforms to improve its functionality.

By contrast, in Kazakhstan, although reform-oriented positions were also present, expressions of support for withdrawal were more visible. This appears to be linked to heightened perceptions of Russia as a potential threat to national sovereignty, particularly in light of recurring discursive attacks by certain Russian politicians and public commentators on Kazakhstan’s territorial integrity.

Beyond this finding, our results largely align with existing theoretical and empirical expectations. Thus, while the study contributes new empirical evidence from the region, it primarily reinforces rather than fundamentally challenges established understandings of public attitudes toward regional integration.

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