Putin hails Nazarbayev’s Eurasian-Integration Efforts

    Russian President Vladimir Putin has awarded Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev a state honor for his contribution "in bilateral efforts to advance Eurasian integration processes."
    An order announcing the granting of the Order of Aleksandr Nevsky to Nazarbayev was posted on the Kremlin website on June 8.
    Earlier, Putin bestowed the same honor on Belarusian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka.
    Russia, Belarus, and Kazakhstan were the founding members of the Eurasian Economic Union. Armenia joined in 2014, and Kyrgyzstan is expected to join in May.
    Nazarbayev first proposed the idea of a "Eurasian Union of States" during a speech in Moscow in March 1994.
    The following year, Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Russia signed a customs-union treaty that became the foundation of the Eurasian Economic Union, RFE/RL reports.