Central Asia

The government of Kazakhstan, in a statement issued on Saturday (5 June) rebuffed the idea of such a joint response raised last week by Russian deputy foreign minister Alexander Pankin who said that the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU), which brings together Belarus, Kazakhstan, Russia, Armenia and Kyrgyzstan, was working on a “consolidated response” to Western sanctions against some of its members.

Kazakhstan is exploring its options. The government has embarked on a series of reforms, as yet mainly in the economic sphere, although reforms in the governance sector are also inevitable. They include slimming down the bloated state bureaucracy and also slowly re-calibrating Kazakh foreign policy to make it less dependant on Russia. The Russians are not amused, says Dennis Sammut in this op-ed

Assavbayev briefed the Azerbaijani minister on new initiatives being considered, as well as plans on expanding the geography of activities, cooperation with the EU and other issues.

Violence erupted on Thursday (29 April) on another border area in the former Soviet space, this time in Central Asia. A ceasefire now appears to be holding on the border area between Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan but both sides report casualties in yesterday's clashes.

21 March is celebrated as International Nowruz Day. Nowruz marks the first day of spring and is celebrated on the day of the astronomical vernal equinox, which usually occurs on 21 March. It is celebrated as the beginning of the new year by more than 300 million people all around the world and has been marked for over 3,000 years in the Balkans, the Black Sea Basin, the Caucasus, Central Asia, the Middle East and other regions.

In Jalalabad, three women who worked for Enikas TV aged between 18 and 20 had died, and a fourth was critically injured, after being shot on their way home from work, Afghan officials have said. The three women dubbed dramas from Turkey and India into Afghanistan’s local languages of Dari and Pashtu.