Kazakhstan's sovereign wealth fund, which controls oil producer KazMunaiGaz and the nation's rail monopoly, said selling its companies' foreign-currency earnings alone won't stave off pressure on the tenge to decline.

Moves are afoot in Kazakhstan to hold a snap presidential election. Proponents say an early election would give incumbent strongman Nursultan Nazarbayev a fresh mandate as the country faces a slumping economy and regional geopolitical tensions over the Ukraine conflict.

Kazakhstan's slowing economy is pinching the country's industrial heartland. Several industrial behemoths have announced cutbacks that they blame on a toxic mix of factors hitting their bottom lines, from falling commodity prices to an overvalued tenge. And as the enterprises pass the losses onto their workers, Astana is looking on anxiously, with memories of violent unrest in Kazakhstan's oil fields still fresh.

Russia's post-Soviet security bloc will work to build up the capacity of other member states to produce substitutes for Ukrainian weaponry, the bloc's top official announced.

Conservative MPs in Britain will today launch a campaign to force Tony Blair to reveal how much he earns - and continue to declare who pays him for the rest of his life. The Tory MP Andrew Bridgen is tabling a Commons motion arguing that the rules that apply to serving MPs about disclosing their income should also apply to former prime ministers.

In this instalment of our series looking at Russia's relations with the countries along its border, we reach Kazakhstan, Moscow's closest ally in central Asia. Region specialist Julia Kusznir tells a story of two countries bound together by mutual dependency, but with one or two telling cracks at the edges.