Presidential elections are being held in Kazakhstan this week. Though there is a multiplicity of candidates in the running, only one is expected to receive a significant percentage of the vote: incumbent Nursaltan Nazarbayev. Nazarbayev, the first and only president of Kazakhstan following the collapse of the Soviet Union, published an op-ed in a prominent…
Kyrgyz Prime Minister Joomart Otorbaev announced he is stepping down after just over a year in office, making this the fifth prime minister the country has seen since the 2010 revolution. Otorbaev didn’t give an immediate reason for his resignation but the move comes in the midst of an enormous debate over the operations of…
Sources close to the CASA-1000 negotiations indicate that the deal will finally be signed today or tomorrow in Istanbul. Officials from Pakistan, Afghanistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan are set to convene anew to finalize the terms of the much-discussed but frequently-delayed hydroelectric transmission project. According to these same sources, one two of the major factors still being…
Today, EU antitrust regulators have made the case the Gazprom has abused its dominance over European natural gas markets. The European Commission said that unfair pricing has resulted in higher gas prices in Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland – most of which are almost 100% dependent on imported Russian natural gas. Regulators assert a…
China continues to develop plans to implement its New Silk Road policy. Specifically, Beijing recently maneuvered to inject approximately $62bn USD into state-controlled “policy banks” in order to further development of the planned trade route. The strategy outlined by the Chinese government includes significant amounts of infrastructure development throughout the region, as well as already-implemented…
EU Leaders snubbed the Russian Victory Day parade, which celebrates the ending of World War II (called the Great Patriotic War in Russia) by refusing or otherwise rebuffing offers to attend. Russian media conglomerates blamed pressure from the United States and Russian leaders rebuked the European political elite for “boycotting those who lost hundreds of…
Russian President Vladimir Putin played host to an annual telethon and question-and-answer session earlier this week in Moscow. During the Q&A session, the Russian president stated that he expects Russia’s economy to reach growth levels seen before the current crisis within a period of two years. While likely to attract naysayers in the West, the…
The ruble has been on a relatively steady upward trajectory since the beginning of the year, and yesterday traded for the first time under the exchange rate of 50:1 on the dollar since last November. In total, the currency has regained 22% of its value. Most analysts point to rising oil benchmarks and Russian sovereign…
It’s generally the contention among observers of Central Asia that most governments fear a spillover of violence from Afghanistan into their own territories, feeding nascent Islamist movements and causing large-scale violent disruptions in governance. This is hard to refute given the drawdown of American troops in Afghanistan and the increasing recruiting activities of ISIS among…
Tajik President Emomali Rahmon recently attended a water usage conference in Daegu, South Korea. As expected, Tajikistan’s first and only president made reference to Tajikistan’s abundant water resources, and vowed to make greater use of them in the coming years. Specifically, he called for scientists and other experts from around the world to come to…
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