Confronted with the new Taliban government in Afghanistan, adjacent Tajikistan has broken from its Central Asian neighbors, which have largely adopted a conciliatory posture, and opted for a more confrontational approach. Speaking on the eve of Tajikistan’s 30th anniversary of independence and one day after... MORE

The recent fall of Afghanistan to the Taliban took many a government by surprise. Kazakhstan—Central Asia’s biggest economy, which has no shared border with Afghanistan but is nonetheless actively involved in the regional security dialogue—was no exception. On August 15, the day the Taliban conquered... MORE

*To read Part One, please click here. The Joint Statement on the US-Ukraine Strategic Partnership was released during President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s Washington visit (Whitehouse.gov, President.gov.ua, September 1), but surprisingly it carries no signatures. This document’s two direct predecessors, in 2008 and 2018, respectively, had been... MORE

In Soviet times, Russian writers habitually referred to what many now call Central Asia as “Central Asia and Kazakhstan” as a way of signaling that, from Moscow’s perspective, Kazakhstan was closer to Russia. Kazakhstan stood out from the other Soviet republics of Central Asia by... MORE

The political crisis in Belarus seems to have entered the stage of unstable equilibrium both inside the country and along its perimeter. A system in this position accelerates away from steadiness if displaced even slightly. As Yauhenii Preiherman, who heads the Minsk Dialogue platform, opined,... MORE

On July 14, thirteen people, including nine Chinese nationals and four Pakistanis, were killed and 28 others were injured when a bus carrying them to a construction site of the Dasu hydropower project fell into a ravine following an explosion in the Upper Kohistan area... MORE

Anti-Taliban Resistance in Afghanistan’s Panjshir Finds Support in Tajikistan Jacob Zenn On September 4, videos surfaced of Afghan Taliban forces reaching the Panjshir governor’s office (Twitter/@hamimafghan, September 4). This appeared to be the death knell for the attempted Panjshir resistance to Taliban rule led by... MORE

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s visit to the United States (August 31–September 2) succeeded, at least, in halting the degradation of the bilateral relationship, under way since 2019, particularly after the advent of the Joseph Biden administration. The White House’s temptation of a neo-reset with Russia... MORE

The typical opinion in the Moscow political bazaar is that every foreign policy setback for the United States represents a net gain for Russia. The US withdrawal from Afghanistan, with each of its faults eagerly amplified by Russian propaganda, is nevertheless, a hard challenge to... MORE

In his marathon question-and-answer session on August 9, Belarusian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka again ruled out the integration of Belarus with Russia at the level of institutions as well as the stationing of Russian combat forces on Belarus’s territory (President.gov.by, August 9; see EDM, August 16).... MORE