Until the close of 2015, Russia was the sole investor in two planned hydro-electric power projects in Kyrgyzstan: the Upper-Naryn cascade project and the Kambar-Ata-1 hydropower plant. The Upper Naryn project is estimated to cost $700 million and consists of four hydropower plants, while Kambarata-1,... MORE

With the global oil price dropping to below $40 per barrel and the tenge showing the worst performance among the world’s currencies in a year (Nur.kz, December 19, 2015), Kazakhstan is hastily adjusting to the dramatic change in market conditions by returning to more liberal... MORE

Neither Turkmenistan, which has maintained a policy of strict neutrality since the 1990s, nor Tajikistan, which hosts a Russian military base on its territory, has a military force capable of resisting incursions by the Islamic State (IS), the Taliban or other militant forces emanating from... MORE

Looking ahead to 2016, Mongolia’s government publicized a series of major developments in its large state-owned mining projects of Oyu Tolgoi (OT) and Tavan Tolgoi (TT), which could pull the country’s battered economy out of its downward spiral of disappearing foreign direct investment (FDI) and... MORE

In slightly over a generation, Kazakhstan has gone from being a republic in which ethnic Russians formed a plurality, to one in which ethnic Kazakhs form a two-thirds majority. But to keep that country within Russia’s orbit, Moscow still counts on the fact that most... MORE

On December 13, Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India broke ground on the constructions of a new natural gas pipeline that will carry Turkmenistani gas eastward toward the other three partner countries (Tribuneindia.com, Tribune.com.pk, December 13; Timesca.com, December 14). The Turkmenistan–Afghanistan–Pakistan–India (TAPI) pipeline project, in one... MORE

On November 28, Russian President Vladimir Putin declared economic sanctions against Turkey. Four days earlier, the latter had downed a Russian Su-24 fighter jet near the border with Syria after it illegally entered Turkish airspace, according to both Ankara and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization... MORE

In early November 2015, US Secretary of State John Kerry toured all five former Soviet republics in Central Asia. It was the first such visit by a top United States diplomat to the region, long regarded by Russia as its backyard and “sphere of privileged... MORE

Since achieving independence in 1991, following the collapse of the Soviet Union, landlocked Kazakhstan has sought to end its geographical isolation by fostering relations with neighboring countries. In recent weeks, Kazakhstan’s national railway company Kazakhstan Temir Zholy (KTZ) and India’s Ministry of Railways signed a... MORE

On November 1, the city of Samarkand, Uzbekistan, hosted the foreign ministers of the five Central Asian republics, who met together with US Secretary of State John Kerry in the newly introduced C5+1 format (Rpg15.wordpress.com, November 1). Initiated by Washington, the C5+1 format has several... MORE