The president of Kazakhstan, Nursultan Nazarbayev, paid an official visit to Uzbekistan in mid-September, highlighting improving relations between Central Asia’s two largest states. There, he met with his Uzbekistani counterpart, Shavkat Mirziyaev, for the sixth time since the latter took office last December, following the... MORE

Many countries around the world are now threatened by rising sea levels in coastal areas as a result of climate change and the melting of the polar ice caps. Russia is experiencing such a scenario in the Arctic. But it is also facing another serious... MORE

Russian President Vladimir Putin made another trip to China last month (May 14–15) to address the Belt and Road Forum. But his speech at the summit’s opening highlighted that Russia and Chi­na ascribe completely different meaning to Beijing’s ambitious One Belt, One Road (OBOR) initiative.... MORE

Since the start of 2017, the amount of cargo passing through Russian ports on the Caspian Sea has fallen, compared to last year, by 48.4 percent to only 1.1 million tons, according to the Russian Ports Association. This figure is striking given that Russian ports... MORE

Moscow’s chief negotiator on the legal status of the Caspian Sea, Igor Bratchikov, stated, on April 14, at the international “Caspian Dialogue” forum in Moscow, that “the Convention on the Legal Status of the Caspian Sea is almost ready, and the absolute majority of provisions have... MORE

It takes three separate diplomatic efforts for three countries to sign three bilateral strategic partnership agreements. That is exactly what happened over the past four years in Central Asia: first Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan signed a strategic partnership in June 2013; then Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan concluded... MORE

Three months since his election last December, Uzbekistan’s President Shavkat Mirziyaev made his first official trip abroad, visiting neighboring Turkmenistan on March 6–7. The visit put an end to rampant speculation about where his maiden foreign trip would take him. Some, for instance, had expected... MORE

No post-Soviet republic is so little known beyond its borders as Turkmenistan. This relative obscurity internationally is the result of three legacies: its poverty in Soviet times; its relatively tiny cohort of intellectuals who might have called attention to the country; and perhaps most importantly,... MORE

The following political landscape piece is a part of Eurasia Daily Monitor’s special quarterly series of strategic assessments of developments across Eurasia. These pieces examine recent important developments and trends in the region, particularly since this past summer, and anticipate where those trend lines may... MORE

As the global economy continues its slow recovery from the 2008–2009 worldwide recession, armament sales appear to have been one of the few recession-proof export sectors. The greater Middle East has been main emporium for such purchases. While the United States and Russia remain the world’s... MORE