TODAY: Putin signs Eurasian Economic Union agreement with Kazakhstan and Belarus; 14 killed in helicopter attack in Slavyansk; Putin not invited to Poroshenko’s inauguration; Sberbank profits hit by crisis; more positive ratings for Putin; no competitive duty free; Glazyev and Lavrov stir war of words.

President Vladimir Putin signed an agreement with his Kazakh and Belarusian counterparts yesterday to create the long awaited Eurasian Economic Union that, in Putin’s words, ‘unites more than 170 million people’.  Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko noted that the alliance ‘lost someone along the way, I mean Ukraine’; Kazakh President Bakytzhan Sagintayev praised the union as unpolitical: ‘It is a pragmatic means to get benefits. We don’t meddle into what Russia is doing politically.’ The ‘epoch-making’ alliance, as Putin called it, will come into force on January 1, with critics arguing that the alliance will be a ‘pale imitation of what the members first envisioned.’  The absence of Ukraine from the group ‘undermine[s Putin’s] dream of restoring Soviet glory days,’ says Reuters; Kyrgyzstan is already being courted as the next to join.  The agreement was promptly followed by various new oil deals.  Russia, Ukraine, and the European Union are holding talks today in an attempt to resolve the current gas dispute.  14 people were killed in Slavyansk yesterday after pro-Russian rebels shot down a Ukrainian military helicopter.  Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko responded by vowing to punish those responsible.  Putin did not receive an invitation to Poroshenko’s inauguration ceremony, according to his spokesperson.