Akezhan Kazhegeldin analyses the reasons behind the economic crisis in Kazakhstan and proposes some decisive reforms.

A handful of civil society campaigners staged a rare picket in Almaty on March 18, demanding freedom for a political activist sentenced to jail on incitement charges.

A former prime minister of Kazakhstan who was jailed last year in a high-profile corruption case has had his jail sentence reduced on appeal.

On February 3, 2016, Kazakhstan's president Nursultan Nazarbayev made a symbolically powerful decree on how Kazakh soldiers should march during military parades. The abolition of the Soviet goose step formation, utilized by Russia, was a striking display of the Kazakh military's increasingly independent identity. As Georgia in 2007 and Estonia in 2008 abolished the formation during periods of tense relations with Russia, Nazarbayev's decision raised fresh questions about the strength of the long-standing Russia-Kazakhstan partnership.

In many democratic systems, holding legislative elections amid spiraling inflation, a rapidly depreciating currency, sharp contractions in government expenditure and reports of job losses and delayed wages usually spells trouble for a governing party.

Standing against the current president of Kazakhstan could not, by any measure, be considered a good career move.