Monthly Archive

Kazakhstan renamed Astana’s international airport after the first and current president of the country, Nursultan Nazarbayev. With a government decree, Kazakhstan’s Astana International Airport was... read more..

Recycling trashcans are everywhere you look at the Future Energy EXPO in Kazakhstan’s capital. For a region in which sprawling, smoldering, methane-emitting landfill sites are the norm, the message is... read more..

Teodoro Nguema Obiang Mangue, whose father is president of Equatorial Guinea, went on trial Monday in France for embezzling more than US$ 112 million of state money to fund a lavish lifestyle in Paris... read more..

After a quarter century of independence, the fragmentation of Central Asia is evident to all. A senior official there might justifiably complain about how each country “[is] pursuing its own limited o... read more..

The Central Asian country built a futuristic city to host the World's Fair and polish its own brand. One small problem: it forgot to invite guests. I was the only visitor in Greece. As I walked thr... read more..

Kazakhstan’s EXPO 2017, an international exposition featuring the theme of “future energy,” opened with much fanfare on June 9 in Astana, the country’s capital. The large spherical building that ho... read more..

Political opposition never got much of a look in in authoritarian Kazakhstan, where the same man has been in power for over a quarter of a century, but a draft law being considered by the country's ru... read more..

Kazakh politics plays out far from the steppe — in New York lofts and courts. A new and incredibly thorough report, produced in partnership by McClatchy and the Organized Crime and Corruption Repor... read more..

When Nurziya Kazhibayeva was six years old, a famine swept across Kazakhstan. “One day back then my mother told me: ‘We’re going to China. You can walk, can’t you? You’re a good girl. We’ll be goin... read more..

This is the first in a series of studies conducted as part of a program to analyze historical precedents and develop recommendations on how to diversify resource-based economies. The project is bei... read more..

Twenty-five years after the breakup of the Soviet Union, Turkmenistan holds the title of the most authoritarian of all former Soviet states. Saparmurat Niyazov, the country’s last Soviet and first ... read more..

The net is closing around a duo of fugitive oligarchs and their kin accused of laundering Kazakh money in posh U.S. real estate — including Trump Organization properties. In a complicated case with... read more..