Ukraine’s 2014 Euromaidan revolution derailed Vladimir Putin’s vision of a pan-Eurasian integration from Lisbon to Vladivostok, leaving behind a “ghost corridor” of unrealized cooperation and fuelling today’s multipolar competition over ideas, technology, and global order.

Resetting the Board

As we have seen, history often pivots on inflection points. The Euromaidan protests of 2013–2014 in Kyiv marked a significant paradigm shift toward Western institutions, sparking a cascade of conflict, sanctions, and estrangement between Russia and Europe. But what if those protests had not succeeded? What if Ukraine had remained in Moscow’s orbit, preserving the conditions for a radically different trajectory - one in which Vladimir Putin’s long-articulated vision of a “common economic space from Lisbon to Vladivostok” could be realized?

Putin himself framed the initiative as nothing less than a continental reset:

“We propose the creation of a harmonious economic community stretching from Lisbon to Vladivostok … we could even consider a free trade zone or even more advanced forms of economic integration. The result would be a unified continental market with a capacity worth trillions of euros.”

As I observed in 2018, this plan was essentially for the creation of one gigantic Eurasian market worth tens of trillions of dollars. The plan was for a full and fair integration of Russia within the global context. The part the Western elites had a problem with was that Russia would have been an integral partner rather than a network of small banana republics like Yugoslavia became. “The Putin plan would have assured almost unbreakable cooperation, prosperity, and peace. But the suggestion of such a thing to the existing world order was a heinous crime.”

Even in Europe, there was cautious acknowledgment of the idea’s potential. At Davos, German Chancellor Angela Merkel remarked:

“Later on, in the bigger picture … we can try to explore possibilities of cooperation, and an economic area that President Putin himself called ‘from Vladivostok to Lisbon.’”

The Eurasian Dream and Ukraine’s Role

The intellectual roots of Eurasian integration stretch back to the early 20th century, but in the post-Soviet era, Putin reformulated the idea as a pragmatic economic project. By 2015, the Greater Eurasian Partnership (GEP) was presented as a framework to bind the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU), China’s Belt and Road Initiative, and other regional platforms such as ASEAN and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization into a coherent continental system.

Ukraine’s role was pivotal. As the geographic hinge of Eurasia, Ukraine provided not only transit infrastructure but also symbolic legitimacy to Russia’s leadership of a wider continental bloc. Had Kyiv remained within Moscow’s orbit, the “land bridge” to Europe would have remained open, making the Lisbon–Vladivostok corridor more than aspirational rhetoric. Instead, Euromaidan severed that link, with Ukraine shifting toward NATO and EU integration - a transformation that fundamentally disrupted the possibility of Eurasian consolidation.

What Might Have Been Gained vs. What Was Lost

A realized Vladivostok-to-Lisbon space might have delivered three categories of benefit:

Economic Synergies: A combined market of nearly a billion people, expanded infrastructure, energy security, and cross-border investment.

Geopolitical Balance: Reduced East–West confrontation, with Russia functioning as a bridge rather than an adversary.

Civilizational Dialogue: A pan-Eurasian identity that transcended Cold War binaries of “liberal West” versus “illiberal East.”

Instead, we all bore witness to the inverse. Russia’s inclusion of Crimea, a grinding war in Donbas, reciprocal sanctions, and the militarization of Eastern Europe hardened divisions. The European Union lost an opportunity for long-term energy security and economic expansion, while Russia turned eastward under duress, becoming more dependent on China and, more recently, Iran and India. The dream of a balanced, multipolar Eurasia was displaced by an entrenched standoff that some commentators now describe as a “new Cold War.”

Yet the deeper dimension of Putin’s proposal cannot be ignored. In 2012, Anton Vaino, now the chief of staff to the Russian president, co-authored a paper describing a device called the Nooscope, said to measure the “noosphere” - the highest stage of Earth’s development, when human thought itself becomes a planetary force. I took note of this in several reports; here is a fragment from one of them:

“The invention, the Nooscope, was reportedly a device capable of measuring the noosphere, or the highest stage of biospheric development, that of humankind’s rational activities. And through the measurement of humanity’s activities, along with the use of advanced artificial intelligence (AI), the Russian leadership seemed to be seeking a new order not simply of which countries have a say so, but a system that could elevate humanity to its next logical level.”

Western strategists noticed as well. A 1999 RAND Corporation report described the noosphere as a “global thinking circuit” and urged the U.S. to adopt noopolitik - a strategy where “the decisive factor in tomorrow’s wars of ideas is bound to be whose story wins.” RAND’s 2022 follow-up reaffirmed the concept but treated the noosphere narrowly: as an information environment to be secured for American advantage.

Given the avalanche of interest and the use of AI today, the contrast is stark. Where RAND saw narrative dominance, Russia and its partners began to imagine a multipolar order rooted in collective intelligence. This vision is no longer confined to Moscow and Beijing. The BRICS bloc, along with the SCO and the Global South more broadly, increasingly embodies noospheric logic: shared infrastructure, digital commons, new payment systems, and platforms of cultural legitimacy. We are witnessing this original evolution presented by Russian geochemist Vladimir Vernadsky and French paleontologist Teilhard de Chardin. The evolution of our planet was being measured by Russia’s leader years ago, and presumably being put in action today.

Recent studies highlight how China and the United States are already in a pitched battle to shape the noosphere itself. China is increasingly viewed as a decisive factor in this “sphere of reason,” not only because of its vast population and capacity to influence collective thought, but also because of its rapid technological advances and ability to tilt the global balance of power through innovation in digital networks. In other words, the very concept that Putin and his circle first elevated into global discourse - and which Western commentators once derided as fringe - has become the new battleground of world order.

Yet it does not have to be a battlefield. Properly understood, the noosphere is not an arena for zero-sum struggle but a platform for cooperation - a planetary superorganism of human thought where multipolar contributions could elevate civilization rather than divide it.

Conclusion: The Ghost Corridor of Geopolitics

The unbuilt corridor from Vladivostok to Lisbon remains a haunting metaphor for paths not taken. As Kirill Barsky has argued, the Greater Eurasian Partnership represented Russia’s attempt to design a pluralistic, multipolar system that included the EAEU, SCO, BRICS, and ASEAN (PIR Center). Yet without Ukraine and without reciprocal trust from Europe, the vision collapsed under the weight of suspicion and rivalry. A crucial question for all of us is, “In whose interest was/is it to prevent what is inevitable?”

For scholars of international relations, the lesson is not simply to mourn what was lost but to recognize how fragile grand projects remain when trust erodes. The road from Vladivostok to Lisbon is today a ghost corridor - a reminder that history could have unfolded differently, and that while the West doubled down on confrontation, the rest of the world began quietly building a new order on a deeper plane: the realm of human thought itself.

Phil Butler is a policy investigator and analyst, a political scientist and expert on Eastern Europe, and an author of the recent bestseller “Putin’s Praetorians” and other books. Courtesy

https://journal-neo.su/2025/09/08/from-vladivostok-to-lisbon-a-counterfactual-geopolitical-analysis-of-eurasias-unchosen-path/