Casey Michel
To get a sense of why the world this month welcomed the Eurasian Economic Union with such resounding silence, look back to late August. As his country began its ongoing march into economic crumble, Russian President Vladimir Putin fielded a question at the Seliger Youth Camp. A young woman wanted the president's thoughts on the geopolitical turbulence surrounding Russia—not from the Russia-backed separatists scorching eastern Ukraine, but from apparently ignorant Kazakhs to the south.
It's not often that Kazakhstan's backyard politicking come to the fore. It's rarer yet when such sniping is aired in English, made available to that much larger of an audience. It's political gossip at its finest – open and sharp, with accusations anted and points countered with language as colorful as the content is heavy. There's a certain guilty pleasure in it all. If this didn't carry so many denotations of human rights concerns, this could almost be fun.
Rakhat Aliyev, the ex-husband of Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev's eldest daughter, surrendered today in Austria seven years after police in his home country sought his arrest in a murder probe.
With Ukraine in continued crisis and Moscow deflating under a crippled ruble, the European Union has begun scouring for non-Russian gas. Azerbaijan, in the gas-rich southern Caspian, should present a natural replacement.
EVERY couple of years a now familiar cycle begins at Buckingham Palace when officials try to rehabilitate Prince Andrew's battered image.
The Eurasian Economic Union, a trade bloc of former Soviet states, expanded to four nations Friday when Armenia formally joined, a day after the union between Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan began. The Russian-dominated bloc has been politically controversial and its early days are being overshadowed by the sharp deterioration of Russia's economy in recent months.
Kazakhstan's largest city began life as a Russian fortress. The government is doing all it can to stop it becoming one in future once President Nursultan Nazarbayev's long rule ends.
A photo of French President François Hollande dressed in a traditional fur coat and hat given to him by his Kazakh counterpart during a visit to Astana prompted a flurry of jokes on social media on Saturday, angering the Elysée presidential palace.
Traced to a Cote d'Azur villa by private detectives for the bank he once led, the Kazakh oligarch-turned-dissident is dwarfed by the masked French court guards flanking him. He is the smallest man in the room.
