Category: Russia

  • Central Asia and the Conflict in Ukraine: Russia-Friendly Neutrality

     Since the onset of the war in Ukraine in February 2022, the Central Asian countries of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan have adopted a neutral stance towards the conflict. Their leaders have carefully avoided passing value judgement on the war which Dushanbe, for one, still calls  “an incident that occurred between the two states”  […]
    Kirill Nourzhanov/
    May 22, 2024
  • The Soyuz MS-18 rocket is launched with Expedition 65 NASA astronaut Mark Vande Hei with Roscosmos cosmonauts Pyotr Dubrov and Oleg Novitskiy, Friday, April 9, 2021, at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. NASA Photo by Bill Ingalls/UPI Credit: UPI/Alamy Live News

    Emerging space power in Central Asia: Kazakhstan at the crossroad

    After the disintegration of the USSR, Kazakhstan inherited a significant technological artefact of the Soviet space program, the Baikonur Cosmodrome. The management of the spaceport, from which the historically significant Sputnik 1 was launched, was transferred to Russia through a lease agreement from 1994 till 2050. However the Kazakhstani leadership had remained committed to the […]
    Nelly Bekus and Zhomart Medeuov/
    May 22, 2024