Historically, Russia has treated the Balkans as an area solidly within its sphere of vital interests, and that is still the case today. While individual Balkan countries are not especially important geostrategic players in Europe, their location imparts to them a greater, even possibly exaggerated,... MORE

Despite sharing similar desires to become transit corridors between Europe and Asia, Kyrgyzstan and Mongolia have been unable to prioritize new railway projects, whereas Kazakhstan is moving far ahead by building new railways connecting Chinese, Iranian and Russian rail networks. With the newly built second... MORE

In April 2015, the parties to the CASA-1000 project (Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan and Pakistan) signed a number of important legal documents that allow them to finally break ground on the project (Casa-1000.org, April 27, accessed June 5). The construction of the large-scale electricity transmission project,... MORE

Kazakhstan is onboard to help make China’s Silk Road vision a reality. Speaking in Astana on May 5, Kazakhstani President Nursultan Nazarbayev said at a plenary government meeting, “We need to build a new railway line across the territory of Kazakhstan from the border with... MORE

The Russian government is considering building a new water link connecting the Caspian Sea to the ocean via the Azov and Black seas. The new route is supposed to be the shortest and the cheapest way to carry Chinese goods via Central Asia to Europe.... MORE

Deputy ministers of railway and transportation from Mongolia, China and Russia met, on April 9–10, in Ulaanbaatar, for their first consultative meeting since a tripartite summit among the presidents of the three countries in Dushanbe, Tajikistan, in September 2014 (see China Brief, September 25, 2014).... MORE

The much-heralded arrival of the Yixinou train in Madrid last December, after traveling 8,000 miles from Yiwu, China, encapsulated the rapid expansion of China’s railway network across Eurasia and the key role that railroads are playing in Beijing’s New Silk Road strategy (Xinhua, December 9,... MORE

Cooperation between Mongolia and Turkey, particularly in the energy sector, intensified in the first quarter of 2015. On March 3, Mongolian Minister of Energy Dashdorj Zorigt, in a meeting with Turkish Ambassador to Mongolia Murat Karagoz, discussed training programs in Turkey for Mongolian engineers and... MORE

By the end of 2014, Azerbaijan and Georgia had already completed the construction of their own sections of the Baku-Tbilisi-Kars Railway (BTK), which will connect the South Caucasus with Europe via Turkey (APA Agency, January 7, 2015). With its Azerbaijani portion finalized back in 2008,... MORE

Uzbekistan is conveniently located at the center of Central Asia and borders on all Central Asian countries as well as Afghanistan; moreover, it lies in relatively close proximity to the various prodigiously developing markets of Asia. Nonetheless, Uzbekistan has been slow to embrace or champion... MORE