On January 1, 2015, Russia, Kazakhstan and Belarus, along with Armenia, co-launched the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU). The founding treaty of this economic bloc?whose genesis is widely attributed to Kazakhstani President Nursultan Nazarbayev, although it has become the key focus of Vladimir Putin’s foreign policy... MORE

Following Russia’s annexation of Crimea and its intervention in other parts of Ukraine, many in Central Asia and beyond concluded that the foreign and domestic policies of the five Central Asian countries would be radically and irreversibly changed by those events. Some saw Moscow’s actions... MORE

On November 22, the Islamic State organization (formerly known as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria—ISIS) released the fifth edition of its online magazine, Dabiq 5, which on the back cover featured a full-page photo of a boy in military fatigues (RIA Novosti, worldanalysis.net,... MORE

Astana’s language and nationality policies have put Kazakhstan at risk of becoming a second Ukraine in 2015, according to Ilya Namovir, a Russian linguist who edits the “Russians in Kazakhstan” portal. The next twelve months are likely to be critical because, as a result of... MORE

On November 24 and 25, Uzbekistan’s president, Islam Karimov, paid an official visit to neighboring Kazakhstan, where he spent long hours with his local counterpart, Nursultan Nazarbayev. The last time Karimov went to Astana was in September 2012, followed by Nazarbayev’s reciprocal visit to Tashkent... MORE

On November 11, Kazakhstani President Nursultan Nazarbayev made a pre-announced televised address to the nation. Since 1997, the president annually addresses the two chambers of parliament at the beginning of the calendar year, thus allowing him to outline his administration’s forthcoming plans and programs and... MORE

In late September 2014, Erlan Karin, the newly appointed director of the Astana-based Kazakhstan Institute for Strategic Studies, presented a report on Central Asians fighting for the Islamic State (IS—formerly known as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or ISIS) called “Our People in... MORE

In the world of labor union–business relations, it is commonly understood that, oftentimes, the threat of a strike, as long as it is credible, can achieve more than an actual strike itself. On the one hand, the business against which a strike may be launched... MORE

The past nine and a half months of 2014 have been dominated in Kazakhstan by the worsening macroeconomic situation, which has prompted the government to move forward with some unpopular measures while embarking on a set of far-reaching reforms. In February, the National Bank of... MORE

On September 9, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani paid his first official visit to Kazakhstan since taking office last August, when he succeeded the much abrasive Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. This visit took place against the backdrop of a new round of direct talks between Tehran and the... MORE