“…Apart from the EAEU founding states listed above, these are also Armenia (formally since January 2nd 2015) and Kyrgyzstan (formally since August 6th 2015). In Russia's view, the EAEU is to be the next, and this time long-term successful, form of economic cooperation in the post-Soviet area, which will effectively stop potential aspirations of the other four EAEU member states to integrate with the EU while keeping in check the growing influence of China in the region [Kirkham, 2016;Roberts, Moshes, 2016;Popescu, 2014]. What is more, the assumption goes that the role and economic importance of the EAEU in the world economy will gradually rise as a consequence of increasingly tighter cooperation between its member states, which fits in very well with Russia's growing imperial aspirations not only in the geopolitical but also in the economic arena [Molchanov, 2015;Starr, Cornell, 2014].…”