A senior U.S. official will travel to two countries in Central Asia next week to emphasize U.S. support for the independence of post-Soviet states after Russia's annexation of Crimea. Assistant Secretary of State Nisha Biswal, Washington's point person for South and Central Asia, will visit Kazakhstan from March 31 to April 2 and Kyrgyzstan from April 2-4.
Central Asian states have responded to the events in Ukraine by staying silent or issuing cautiously worded statements. With his biggest prize escaping his grasp in Ukraine, Vladimir Putin is likely to turn to the autocrats of Central Asia, particularly Kazakhstan’s Nursultan Nazarbayev, to further his aim of erecting a Eurasian Union of former Soviet states.
Rakhat Aliyev's name is back in a Maltese court even though he may be thousands of miles away in some other country. This is because two former bodyguards have launched a fresh challenge for the Police Commissioner to investigate their claims that they had been tortured on orders of the millionaire and Kazakhstan's former Vice Foreign Minister and later, Ambassador to Austria. The new challenge was made after a court had thrown out a first challenge for the police in Malta to investigate him for alleged crimes against humanity.
The top man at NATO has accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of an outrageous push to redraw the world map. The U.N. secretary-general warned darkly on Thursday that small incidents can "quickly lead to a situation spiraling out of anyone's control." And now other countries in the neighborhood are nervously looking over their shoulders. Russia experts stress that it is extremely unlikely Russia would embark anytime soon on a military adventure beyond Ukraine. Putin has enough problems at home, including an unsteady economy that may be hit soon by broad U.S. sanctions.
The brother of the president of Kazakhstan is asking a Manhattan judge to force a settlement that would strip his ex-wife of a $20 million Plaza pad — even though she negotiated the deal while under house arrest in their home country. The attorney for fertilizer tycoon Bolat Nazarbayev took the highly unusual step of asking Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Eileen Bransten to order Daniyar Nazarbayeva to sign the agreement.
President Vladimir Putin's impulsive incursion into Ukrainian territory has left Russia more isolated than at any time since the Cold War. Predictably, the European Union and the United States have loudly objected. More to the point, however, no country has rallied to Russia's defense. Such deafening silence reflects the degree to which Putin's thinking is out of step with the modern world. With this action, Putin has revealed himself to be an imperial thinker in a post-colonial world.
This week, Russian President Vladimir Putin pulled off a rigged referendum in which an overwhelming majority of Crimean voters chose union with the Russian Federation. But his victory is far from complete. The West retains a powerful card to play: mobilizing international opposition to deny Russia the international legitimacy it seeks for this naked power play. U.S. and European leaders have roundly condemned the referendum, citing international law. It would be wiser, however, for the West to shift the terms of the debate away from the legal merits of Russian conduct, and to focus instead on the illegitimacy of Russia's annexation of Crimea and Moscow's clear aspirations to expand its territory.
On March 12, Mustafa Dzhemilev, a leading figure among the ethnic Crimean Tatars, had a long conversation over the phone with Vladimir Putin. No doubt, they talked about the referendum that was set to take place four days later. According to what Dzhemilev reported to the Ukrainian media, the Russian president asserted that Ukraine's 1991 Declaration of Independence, which was voted on by Parliament after a referendum, did not "comply with the Soviet procedure laid down to leave the structures of the USSR".
Austrian lawyer Gabriel Lansky is hunting down one-time oligarch Rakhat Aliyev, although it is unsure whether the Kazakh millionaire is still in Malta. The Kazakh exile Rakhat Aliyev could have had over €40 million in assets frozen by a Maltese court over a money laundering investigation, the Austrian lawyer hunting him down has told MaltaToday.
CORROSIVE corruption, submissive courts, poverty lapping at the gates of presidential palaces: the parallels between the regimes of Central Asia's autocrats and that of the fallen Ukrainian president, Viktor Yanukovych, are uncomfortably plain. Events in Ukraine pose two worries for the ageing strongmen of Central Asia.
