Central Asia

Sydney Millar writes about the increasingly tense relationship between the Kazakh and Russian leadership as the war in Ukraine rages on.

In the mid-1920s, the borders of the five Soviet republics of Central Asia – Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan – were created by the newly established Soviet state. [...]

In this month's Central Asia editorial, Sydney Millar takes a closer look at the economic development in the Central Asian region since the war outbreak in Ukraine.

Did the Uzbek government just strip the autonomous region of Karakalpakstan of its constitutional right to independence?

The recent break out of violence in Tajikistan's Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Oblast (GBAO) has shown that Tajik officials seem to believe that they will be able to strong-arm residents into [...]

In April the Islamic State-Khorasan Province (ISKP) claimed that it had fired ten rockets at a military base near the Afghan-Uzbek border. With violence ramping up, keeping tabs on the ISKP is [...]

Sydney Millar digs into the election of Serdar Berdimuhamedow, and the establishment of the first modern dynasty in Central Asia

The Kremlin’s war in Ukraine as of February 2022 has proven that President Putin’s central role in the CSTO remains the main obstacle to the organisation's credibility and integrity among its [...]

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last month has put the leaders of the five Central Asian countries in an uncomfortable position. With more sanctions imposed on Russia by the West, the economic and [...]

As mass protests against the regime broke out in Kazakhstan at the beginning of the year, the first month of 2022 will go down in history as Bloody January. Is this the end of the Nazarbayev era?