Kazakhstan’s national uranium company Kazatomprom said, on October 15, that it was ready to go public by selling a portion of its issued shares on the London Stock Exchange and on the trading platform of the Astana International Financial Center (AIFC). The AIFC was officially... MORE

In mid-October, the nationalist-leaning Qazaquni.kz website, run by the Ak Zhol (Democratic Party) of Kazakhstan, published an appeal to Russian-speaking compatriots, calling on them to learn Kazakh. The article stresses that “it is not obligatory for Kazakhs to know Russian,” and therefore, now Kazakhs are... MORE

Relations between the United States and Russia have continued to deteriorate in 2017 and 2018. In August 2017, US President Donald Trump signed into law a new bill called Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA), which extended the post-2014 Ukraine sanctions and enlarged their... MORE

Russian military strategists who have analyzed regional military conflicts between 1999 and 2014 conclude that even a less-developed party may be able to at least partly degrade the technological advantage of a stronger adversary if the weaker power can attain information superiority over its opponent... MORE

The murder of Kazakhstan’s Olympic figure skater Denis Ten in downtown Almaty, on July 19, aroused public grief and outrage as well as calls for police reforms. Two days later, thousands attended the memorial service of the 25-year-old, who won a bronze medal at the... MORE

The hopes of China and some Central Asian countries for the construction of a new canal between the Caspian and the Black Sea have sparked serious ethnic and environmental opposition even before the first spade of ground is turned. The project has its roots in... MORE

Kazakhstanis are increasingly skeptical of close ties with both Russians and Chinese, profoundly limiting the ability of the former to recover the influence Moscow once had there and making it far more difficult for Beijing to move in and supplant it. Further complicating this situation... MORE

The term “pan-Turkism,” which carried a similarly ominous meaning as “enemy of the people” under Joseph Stalin and his Soviet successors, has become a strong component of Kazakhs’ search for national identity ever since their country achieved independence more than a quarter of a century... MORE

Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev signed a decree, on June 21, approving the Draft Convention on the legal status of the Caspian Sea. And he encouraged President Vladimir Putin to ultimately sign the Convention (Pravo.gov.ru, June 22). Even though the complete official text of the... MORE

Moscow suffered a major military-diplomatic defeat recently in Kyzyl, the capital of the Siberian Russian Republic of Tuva. During the opening session of the Commonwealth of Independent States’ (CIS) Defense Ministers Council, the chief of the Russian Ministry of Defense, Sergei Shoigu, urged the CIS... MORE