the place of economics in russian national identitycountries like China and Brazil have shown that the way to catch
up is to form partnerships with Western firms, learn their tech-
nologies through joint ventures and licensing and then develop
indigenous production facilities.
In July 2012 Glazev was appointed an advisor to Putin for the
Customs Union with Belarus and Kazakhstan – a significant step,
bringing this outspoken critic into the presidential administration.
However, in May of that year Putin had promoted his economic
advisor, the liberal Arkadii Dvorkovich, to deputy prime minister
in charge of economic policy, replacing Dvorkovich with another
liberal, Elvira Nabiullina (Sycheva 2012). In 2013, despite vigor-
ous lobbying, Glazev failed to be nominated head of the Central
Bank, losing out to the liberal Nabiullina.
In a ceremony in the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour on 27
November 2013, Sergei Glazev was awarded a prize as one of
the ‘Men of the Year 2013’ for his work in bringing Ukraine
into the Common Economic Space with Russia – one week
after Ukrainian President Yanukovych had refused to sign the
Association Agreement with the EU.^7 The celebrations were pre-
mature: protests in Kyiv would topple the Ukrainian government
in February 2014, and on 27 June the new government signed the
agreement with the EU, putting paid to any chance of Ukraine
joining the Eurasian Economic Union.
Impact of the Ukraine crisis
Putin’s annexation of Crimea in March 2014 triggered a swift
Western response to signal the West’s shock at Russia’s use of
force to change international borders, in violation of the 1994
Budapest Memorandum that Russia had signed recognising
Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity. The first round
of ‘smart’ sanctions targeted named individuals and corpora-
tions involved in the Crimean annexation. (The WTO allows
any country to break their free trade rules if it invokes a national
security exemption.) Covert Russian support for separatist rebels
in eastern Ukraine led to a second wave of broader sectoral sanc-
tions in July that hit corporations in the banking and energy
sectors. Remarkably, Putin responded to the Western sanctions