On April 13, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev paid an official visit to Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina. While there, Aliyev met with his counterparts, the members of the Bosnian tripartite presidency, Željka Cvijanović, Denis Bećirović and Željko Komšić (Azertac, April 13). Despite the shortness of the visit—Aliyev departed... MORE

On April 10, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev paid a one-day official visit to Kazakhstan (President.az, April 10). This visit took place about six months after the first official visit of Kazakhstani President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev as the head of state to Azerbaijan in August 2022 (The... MORE

Kazakhstan has recently proposed the building of a new international gas pipeline to Russia that would run through Kazakhstani territory and connect to China (Interfax, February 22; Astana Times, March 25). The new pipeline project has emerged as a vital need in delivering natural gas... MORE

Moscow had counted on the expansion of its north-south trade via the Caspian Sea to help end-run Western sanctions (Casp-geo.ru, August 3, 2022); however, the sanctions regime, which led the Russian government to seek to expand the capacity of this route in the first place,... MORE

In the three decades since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Russian Federation and China have pursued divergent interests in post-Soviet Central Asia, as Moscow seeks to retain its influence even as Beijing’s “soft power” grows, underpinned by its dynamic economy. In a recent... MORE

In February 2023, Uzbekistani President Shavkat Mirziyoyev announced an energy package valued at over $1 billion to ease the country’s heating and electricity needs (Tashkent Times, February 8). In this, while Russia is considered a key player in providing Tashkent with much-needed oil and natural... MORE

In a development with enormous consequences both for international trade and for Moscow’s control of its far-flung regions across the country’s northern third—places not linked to the center by roads or railways—the Russian Federation is rapidly losing its historical dominance over the Northern Sea Route... MORE

After almost a two-month delay, on February 23, Kazakhstani company KazTransOil finally began exporting oil to Germany, sending the first shipment of 20,000 tons of Kazakhstani oil (Biz Media, February 27). In enabling this supply, Kazakhstan reached an agreement with Russian energy company Transneft to... MORE

On February 13, the groundbreaking ceremony was held in Baku for the largest thermal power station (TSP) yet to be built in Azerbaijan with a planned capacity of 1,280 megawatts (MW) (Apa.az, February 13). The project’s total value is estimated at around $400 million, which... MORE

For many years, the successive leaders of Kyrgyzstan could not capitalize on their country’s strategic location along the shortest route connecting China to Central Asia and further onward to the Middle East and Europe. Now, hopes are cautiously mounting that this might be changing. Current... MORE