Vladimir Rozanskij

​U.S. sanctions against the oil giant Lukoil are expected to have repercussions in Central Asia as well. The Russian company has announced plans to sell its foreign assets — a major issue for a country like Kazakhstan, which exports 80% of its oil through Russian infrastructure but cannot afford to lose access to Western banking systems.

Beijing's business interests in the region – which have grown exponentially with the war in Ukraine – now exceed $90 billion, twice that of Moscow. China supports trade with the conviction that improving living standards can avert any danger of conflict, as seen with the border agreements between Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan

The effects of climate change are leading to a drastic decline in cereal production this year, a crucial sector for the Russian economy. In the Rostov region, 17.5% of the territory has now become desertified. But in the crackdown on any voice of dissent, even environmentalists fighting to protect wooded areas are being targeted.

Iraklij Kobakhidze defends the appeal to the Constitutional Court to outlaw the main opposition forces and says he wants to remain at the helm of the Georgian government until 2030, ‘hoping that the approaches of the European bureaucracy will change’. The National Movement's accusations: the current administration is increasingly transforming Georgian society into a totalitarian dictatorship.

The Mongolian government is expanding international collaborations for projects aimed at protecting its delicate ecosystem and combating climate change. A series of initiatives have been launched with the German government, including a census of the country's forest areas and a laboratory for detecting heavy metals in the atmosphere. In August 2026, Mongolia will host the UN conference on combating desertification.

Despite Rosstat's classified data, several observers claim that Russia's population has now fallen below 140 million, with deaths consistently outnumbering births. The regions with traditionally higher growth rates are those with the highest number of casualties on the Ukrainian front.

The traditional dish that has been celebrated in Yerevan for centuries at the end of October to mark the end of the harvest is a thanksgiving for nature's generosity and a wish for a peaceful winter for those engaged in agricultural work. The filling with thousands of grains of rice represents the whole of humanity, which absorbs the sweetness of the other ingredients inside the pumpkin without losing its own specificity.

Following the collapse of the Soviet Union 35 years ago, the region - close to the Urals - proclaimed its autonomy, later cancelled by Vladimir Putin's “vertical of power”. In today's Urfa, home to thousands of soldiers now on the Ukrainian front, very little remains of those dreams and the word ‘sovereignty’ has been banned from public discourse.

The removal from a monument of the Russian word used to refer to the famine caused by Stalin in the 1930s with the forced abolition of small private farmers has sparked controversy. In present-day Kazakhstan, as in Ukraine, hunger killed millions of people. Behind the formal explanation of the “correction” lies the delicate balance in relations with Moscow.

New accusations against relatives of former Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev raise the issue of the cult of personality surrounding local leaders. Azattyk Asia's analysis: “The sudden transformation of the fathers of the nation into figures to be forgotten reflects the very meaning of political loyalty in our region.” The cases of Tajikistan and Turkmenistan.

After representing the ruling classes for half a century, at 87 he has been accused of wanting to overthrow the Aliyev regime. His arrest is symbolic of Azerbaijan's new position on the international stage, which is bringing to fruition the military campaign to reconquer Karabakh and redefine relations with other countries in the Caucasus and the Middle East.

The new restrictions introduced by Beijing to control exports of precious minerals essential for sophisticated weapons and artificial intelligence applications raise the issue of deposits in Central Asia. Astana claims to have opened a new mining production line for over 20 million tonnes. But transport and infrastructure shortages make international investment uncertain and risky.