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..

The Beijing airport is still draped with One Belt, One Road banners, a week after the close of the summit here devoted to the massive transcontinental infrastructure initiative. Launched in 2013, Pres... read more..

A court in Kazakhstan on May 16 sentenced a labour union leader at the Oil Construction Company (OCC), Amin Eleusinov, to two years in prison after convicting him of embezzlement and of publicly ins read more..

A cross-the-board look at Kazakhstan’s economic turnaround in 2017 and beyond as the country powers ahead with its ambitious reform agenda. On January 30th, Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev an... read more..

Is a former mob-connected hustler—a real estate developer who in 2010 worked on the same floor as Donald Trump as his “senior advisor”—threatening to spill some beans that could harm the president’s r... read more..

Freedom of the press, a devastating landslide, meeting a manaschi, and a special bonus; weekend reads. Central Asia weekend recommended reads and listens: A Year After the Protests in Kazakhstan: RF... read more..

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu states that Ankara and Moscow have come to an agreement on the purchase of the Russian S-400 surface-to-air missile defense system. A number of Russian exper... read more..

Kazakhstan’s Halyk Bank may have to inject at least 230 billion tenge ($738 million) into Kazkommertsbank, the troubled lender it’s set to buy for less than $1 after a state bailout, according to two ... read more..

Director of the European External Action Service Luc Devigne and Deputy Foreign Minister of Kazakhstan Roman Vassilenko co-chaired the Cooperation Committee meeting that met recently in Astana to make... read more..

Kazakhstan, it seems, has been one of the worst violators of a promise made in December to cut oil production. According to data in the International Energy Agency’s March Oil Market Report [PDF], Kaz... read more..

In Cheyenne, Wyoming, a small brick-faced house sits between a Greek Orthodox Church and a tired-looking barbershop. The structure does not stand out. Yet, according to court documents from several... read more..

Kazakhstan has an article in its Criminal Code -- Article 174 to be exact -- that outlaws actions that foment social, national, tribal, racial, class, or religious hatred and actions that insult natio... read more..

In 2011, Peace Corps left Kazakhstan. Newly surfaced documents shed light on the real reasons why. When the Peace Corps shuttered its operations in Kazakhstan in 2011, rumors abounded. Stories of r... read more..

The third airport attacker was identified as being from Russia, where Islamic violence has broken out for decades — in the Chechnya separatist war, as part of a persistent insurgency in neighboring Da... read more..

Regime Classification: Consolidated Authoritarian Regime   Nations in Transit Ratings and Averaged Scores NOTE: The ratings reflect the consensus of Freedom House, its academic advisers,... read more..

25 years after independence, which Central Asian and South Caucasian countries are the best (and worst) places to invest? In 2016, all of the five Central Asian and three South Caucasian countries ce... read more..

The Trump administration must keep the U.S. a player in the region. Developing a new strategic approach to Central Asia is probably at the bottom of the Trump administration's foreign policy inbox. N... read more..

Kazakhstan has successfully argued in a US appeals court that it can file suit against a former top official — an avowed foe of the government — in California for compensation over alleged acts of cor... read more..

Tens of millions of dollars from uranium investors flowed into the Clinton Foundation, and Bill Clinton received a $500,000 speaking fee from a Russian bank tied to the Kremlin before Secretary of Sta... read more..