On the last day of January, Kazakhstani media reported that Major-General Talgat Yessetov, the director of the Border Service Academy under the National Security Committee, had committed suicide in his office in the country’s capital. Before his appointment as the head of an elite military... MORE

Iran has accepted Kazakhstan’s offer to host the next round of its nuclear negotiations with the P5+1 group (all five permanent United Nations Security Council members and Germany) (Trend, February 4). Citing a desire to reduce regional tensions and avert an escalation of the nuclear... MORE

Just two weeks into 2013, Kazakhstan’s President Nursultan Nazarbayev announced the reorganization of the country’s government. On January 16, he ordered the establishment of a new ministry in charge of regional development whose head, Bakhytzhan Sagintayev, had previously led the day-to-day activities of the ruling... MORE

On January 28, 2013, Kazakhstan’s Oil and Gas Ministry announced the country had exported 68.62 million tons of crude oil and condensed natural gas in 2012, a 3.3-percent rise over the 2011 figure. In 2013, Kazakhstan plans to produce 82 million tons of crude oil... MORE

Hours before Kazakhstan’s newly appointed Foreign Minister Erlan Idrissov started his first official visit to the Russian Federation, one of Russia’s daily newspapers reported that the country’s foreign ministry had addressed a diplomatic note to its Kazakhstani counterpart with regard to the issue of the... MORE

*To read Part One, please click here. According to the data released in December 2012 by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Kazakhstan’s stock of cumulative foreign investment abroad was around $20 billion at the end of 2011. The top five destinations for Kazakhstan’s Outward Foreign... MORE

News agencies reported on January 10 that the European Union had earmarked 2.1 million euros ($2.8 million) for Kyrgyzstan to administer and rehabilitate the country’s former uranium-producing site in Min-Kush in central Naryn province as well as the uranium tailings (waste by-products of uranium mining)... MORE

In 2012, Kazakhstan’s law enforcement agencies suppressed the activities of 205 missionaries representing the unregistered religious organization Tablighi Jamaat, Kazakhstani Senator Iran Amirov said. According to the Central Asian republic’s laws, the activity of any unregistered religious organization is prohibited. Therefore, Tablighi Jamaat missionaries had... MORE

Despite common perceptions that China and Russia are the main external influences on Kazakhstan’s economy, newly released information from the National Bank of Kazakhstan shows that, as of the end of September 2012, Western countries topped the charts as the main sources of foreign direct... MORE

The construction of China’s New Eurasian Land Bridge through Central Asia has been gathering speed in recent months and looks to make even greater progress in 2013. At the end of 2012, China and Kazakhstan opened their second major rail link at the Xinjiang-Kazakhstan border... MORE