Political, security and economic developments in Central Asia

My understanding was that Russia has the ties with Armenia and that Azerbaijan is the rebel... the problem child... the other Georgia in the region.

But while they appear to be more aggressive and wanting to fight the Azeris also seem to be more respectful of Russia, while Armenia seems to have Finland syndrome... ie I am a small country and my best play is to play my big neighbour off from its enemies to get good will and presents from both sides...

A sort of treat them mean and keep them keen... but they ignored the fact that Russian enemies are the US and the EU and they hate fence sitters... you are either our bitch or you are with the enemy... what we have seen with Finland and also Sweden who was not really even that much of a fence sitter... more someone who didn't really want to get involved and get their hands dirty.

The Issue for Armenia is that their government thinks it can play games, but why does it think it is so critical to Russia that they would do anything to defend them... especially when they are asking America for the help and seem to be pushing Russia away.

OK... a Hokey source, but western news footage of people in Armenia seems to show them wanting to join Europe... I understand western news footage is BS and it was probably filmed in some Ukrainian backwater with people pretending to be Armenian, but I would like to hear from someone who lives there.

Missing TheArmenian...

GarryB wrote:My understanding was that Russia has the ties with Armenia and that Azerbaijan is the rebel... the problem child... the other Georgia in the region.

But while they appear to be more aggressive and wanting to fight the Azeris also seem to be more respectful of Russia, while Armenia seems to have Finland syndrome... ie I am a small country and my best play is to play my big neighbour off from its enemies to get good will and presents from both sides...

A sort of treat them mean and keep them keen...  but they ignored the fact that Russian enemies are the US and the EU and they hate fence sitters... you are either our bitch or you are with the enemy... what we have seen with Finland and also Sweden who was not really even that much of a fence sitter... more someone who didn't really want to get involved and get their hands dirty.

The Issue for Armenia is that their government thinks it can play games, but why does it think it is so critical to Russia that they would do anything to defend them... especially when they are asking America for the help and seem to be pushing Russia away.

OK... a Hokey source, but western news footage of people in Armenia seems to show them wanting to join Europe... I understand western news footage is BS and it was probably filmed in some Ukrainian backwater with people pretending to be Armenian, but I would like to hear from someone who lives there.

Missing TheArmenian...

TheArmenian has been AWOL from here since the war back in 2020

I sure hope medium to long term strategsist in Russia have pulled the alarm over Kazakhstan. It is almost worse than 2013 Ukraine right now. The current Kazakhstan regime doesn't even maintain any pretense of alignment or friendship with Russia.

News https://t.me/sputnik/14640

The Russian Foreign Ministry summoned the Ambassador of Kazakhstan.

The reason is the return of the Ukrainian ambassador to the country, despite Astana's assurances that he will be expelled.

"This character has reappeared in the capital of Kazakhstan, and clearly not in order to "just pack up and pick up the family." Openly, he attends diplomatic receptions as the head of the diplomatic mission," Zakharova said.

Sprinter Monitor
@SprinterMonitor
A plane with Israeli soldiers on board made an emergency landing at the airport of the Iranian city of Shiraz..


Sprinter Monitor
@SprinterMonitor
Israeli TV channel war correspondent Itai Blumenthal writes:
"An IDF soldier who went on vacation to visit her family in Uzbekistan made an emergency landing in Iran last week."

Information that had been kept secret until now quickly reached the office of Chief of Staff Kochavi, Prime Minister Lapid and the Ministry of Defense.


---
Interesting place for "vacation".

It looks like NATzO agents are again attempting to foment another color revolution in Kazakhstan to install another Pro NATzO Puppet

https://t.me/DonbassDevushka/33970


Russia needs to squash this pathetic attempt by NATzO, find their sleeper agents and turn them into premium fertilizer products for export

These are Nazarbayev's sympathizers and Turkic nationalists, in one way or another supported by Turkey. Don't forget that Nazarbayev was creator of Organization of Turkic stares and organizations honorary chairman.

It looks like NATzO agents are again attempting to foment another color revolution in Kazakhstan to install another Pro NATzO Puppet

https://t.me/DonbassDevushka/33970


Russia needs to squash this pathetic attempt by NATzO, find their sleeper agents and turn them into premium fertilizer products for export russia
kvs likes this post

Have to laugh about this

Even though there is nothing amusing if being serious

Tokayev thought he was clever going down the Yanukovich route and sitting on two chairs, appeasing the West, fulfilling their requests in regards to trade with Russia. It even go to the point where allegedly Kazakhstan wasn't allowing the transit of Russian grain, while Russia was blocking the transit of Kazakh oil.

All in the quest for legitimacy, winning the upcoming election and getting Nazarbayev's money unfrozen

Wasn't enough for the West evidently. They're no fools. They want their man in power, not Tokayev's appeasement.
Hope Moscow takes the phone off the hook this time so that he can't get through.

Wasn't enough for the West evidently. They're no fools. They want their man in power, not Tokayev's appeasement.
Hope Moscow takes the phone off the hook this time so that he can't get through.

Not fools... arseholes... but not fools...

Reminds me a bit about relations between the UK and China... the new Brit PM was shit talking China for a bit for cheap support, but when push came to shove he started softening his rhetoric when it came time to talk and Xi wasn't going to let that pass and he cancelled the meetings... ha ha ha...

In this case they possibly deserve a future similar to country 404 post maidan.. with the difference that Kazakhstan does not share a border with Nato countries

In this case maybe Russia could think about an intervention to remove this madness, but only after Tokayev will have paid with his life for his many mistakes. He has been already saved once by Russia...no golden retirement in a nice Russian city like yanukovich.

The only thing is that for Russia it is better if this mess will come up after the situation in ukraine (and in Syria with the curds) is solved


Actually Uzbekistan, after Karimov death, has been much less hostile to Russia than the good friend Kazakhstan...

Everybody talking about 'protests' but I saw only three videos showing at best a couple of hundreds guys walking down a snowy road.. After which they got swiftly loaded into police vans.

The western magnifying lens... is it a protest if they want the right things and they are traitors if they want the wrong things...

Expose the people of the country to the truth and let them decide for themselves, if Russia has to save everyone... well a lot of people are going to be unhappy.

Russia certainly should help allies and friends, but these are sovereign countries that need to sort their own shit out too.

Karimov and Nazarbayev were nothing of the sort

The ones with a nationalist captive nation complex were in Georgia, in the Baltic State, in Azerbaijan briefly - but the Central Asian leaderships were always more level-headed

More over neither Nazarbayev nor Karimov even tried to bring about the end of the USSR, and Nazarbayev refused to take part when he was invited to the Belovezh accords or its planned predecessor.

Which is not to say Nazarbayev was some good guy or something. He rose to power on the back of the unrest in Kazakhstan against Moscow's policies in 1986, and even if he didn't want to see the end of the USSR, was endemic of its problems as this corrupt plotter state bureaucrat.
And indeed his story is that basically of steady corruption by the West, and of all the elites under him, his own family that he enriched and tried to establish as a ruling dynasty.

Karimov I'm less familiar with, but his policy was essentially that of isolationism and trying to maintain neutrality between the West and Russia, much like Turkmenistan except less extreme. He was never pro-Western as such, but excessively tried to avoid getting too close to Moscow or balance moves towards Russia with gestures towards the West, even when it made no sense to do so.
At one time in Uzbekistan there was a government program to replace Russian language learning with English-lanuage learning. But this made absolutely no sense for Uzbekistan. 95% of visitors and tourists it received and still receives are from ex-Soviet countries. Vast majority of its spare laborers go to Russia to earn. And most of its overseas students go to Russia too, with the balance made up by other ex-Soviet destinations.. only a small minority study in the US and Europe.
Long story short, after Karimov's death, the Uzbek elites warmed towards somewhat closer ties and co-operation with Russia, as the previous policy was not giving Uzbekistan as many dividends in economic development.

Kazakhstan said it will close down its trade representation office in Russia by order of the PM.

https://www.moscowtimes.ru/2023/02/01/kazahstan-likvidiruet-torgovoe-predstavitelstvo-v-rossii-a32530 (not a good website, but it appears to be true)

Kazakhstan said it will close down its trade representation office in Russia by order of the PM.

Well cutting off economic ties with Russia worked so well for Ukraine... I am sure Russia can find other places to trade with... in fact they are lining up in the rest of the world to join BRICS...

Would want to see a different source for that information though...

So they want the best of both worlds. Be part of an economic union with Russia & Belarus, get customs-free access to their markets, get visa-free movement access, for their businessmen to register companies and buy/sell in these countries without hassle.. but God forbid Russian and Belorussian truckers register as Kazakhstani ones? Where's the illegality in this?

If the EU posts an objection, then that's the EU's problem not Kazakhstan's - the citizens of whatever country registering their services and vehicles in another one is a perfectly normal thing to do. No different from merchant vessels and cruise ships flying under foreign flags to get the benefit of their regulations and tax regimes. I'm sure more ships fly under the Panama flag than Panama has sailors in total; but who gives them trouble over it?

I say Russia/Belarus throw the book at Kazakhstan and issue an ultimatum over them violating the Eurasian Economic Union's provisions. Enough is enough.

Karimov and Nazarbayev were nothing of the sort

The ones with a nationalist captive nation complex were in Georgia, in the Baltic State, in Azerbaijan briefly - but the Central Asian leaderships were always more level-headed

Nazarbayev, in his time in office, tried hard to de-Russify the country, especially the north. There was a massive relocation of population from the steppes and rural south of the country to more industrialized north, which had Russian majority. Even Astana was built and made capital for the same reason. Not to forget to mention that modern northern Kazakhstan was, historically, never part of the original Kazakhstani lands. We can say that he was more cunning in his doings, but clear results are present.

From DD geopolitics telegram channel.

DD geopolitics wrote::The payment system of Kyrgyzstan has suspended work with Mir cards due to threats to the service company from Latvia, the head of the Cabinet of Ministers said.

The service has been temporarily suspended; there are a number of mechanisms and measures on this issue, the government noted.

It is also reported that the Prime Minister of Kyrgyzstan said that he would visit the United States in mid-April and try to explain that the republic cannot terminate economic relations with Russia.

@DDGeopolitics

The problem is also that all of these countries believe that they can have normal economic relations with the west when this is in a hybrid war with Russia.

Russia would not have problems with them having western suppliers and customers if those countries would not force them to apply their illegal sanctions to Russia too.
Kirghizistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, etc have to choose between cooperating with Russia with mutual advantages (and removing also all western influences and NGO operating there) or being puppets of the west, becoming so hostile countries for Russia.

All choices have consequences and probably choosing the latter will mean that their statehood will be also short lived.

As soon as the Ukrainian situation is solved, Russia should think about how to deal with central Asia, but it must be clear to them that being puppets of the west will mean turning Russia into their enemy. And this is not the Russia of the 90s.

https://topcor.ru/47683-kazahstan-i-uzbekistan-dvizhutsja-po-puti-sozdanija-sojuznogo-gosudarstva.html

Look at this pair of slippery bastards
Russia keeps the Kazak president in power after a coup attempt.
And now Kaz and Uzbekistan (usually big rivals) are talking about a "Union State" ie political union and military union.
Russia needs to crush this pair of wankers. Not to mention 1/3rd of "Kazakstan" was given to it in the 1950s as it was only an administrative region, not a country. In 1991 over 40 pct of Kaz. was ethnic RUssian.

This is another Pukraine in the making. Russia needs to sort this out quickly.
No Putin style "wait and see" which turned a 7 day mil operation into a 2.5 or more year one.

Firebird wrote:https://topcor.ru/47683-kazahstan-i-uzbekistan-dvizhutsja-po-puti-sozdanija-sojuznogo-gosudarstva.html

Look at this pair of slippery bastards
Russia keeps the Kazak president in power after a coup attempt.
And now Kaz and Uzbekistan (usually big rivals) are talking about a "Union State" ie political union and military union.
Russia needs to crush this pair of wankers. Not to mention 1/3rd of "Kazakstan" was given to it in the 1950s as it was only an administrative region, not a country. In 1991 over 40 pct of Kaz. was ethnic RUssian.

This is another Pukraine in the making. Russia needs to sort this out quickly.
No Putin style "wait and see" which turned a 7 day mil operation into a 2.5 or more year one.

And what's the issue?

In fact it was the Russian elites who rejected all forms of confederation with Kazakhstan and the rest of Central Asia in the 90s; there were proposals for joint border control and border guard forces, and a common currency.
BTW at around the same time there were also proposals for a Central Asian union.

And later in the 2000s Nazarbayev was still talking about a Eurasian union of some kind (which ultimately did end up being formed as the Eurasian economic union), and was later also talking about a 'Unistan' of Central Asian states, but mainly because Moscow itself wasn't interested in closer integration.

The main problem with all such proposals from Russia's point of view, is that the Central Asian populations are growing while the Russian one is shrinking, and without the Ukraine (well now it itself is only 20-25 mil in total anyway), that would presumably give too much weight to the Muslim and Turkic populations of any united state and the result would be unpredictable. Moscow may lose control over the state that it itself has formed.
Additionally, if Russia and Central Asian countries form back into some sort of USSR type state, then demands will start to appear in time from some of Russia's internal republics to join said union as equal members themselves, rather than as part of Russia. You had such demands from Tatarstan and Bashkortostan at the end of the 80s - this was another part of the reason why the Russian elites dissolved the USSR by 1991 BTW.

I would cautiously welcome a union-state of Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan and wait to see what comes of it. Neither country is actually anti-Russian. The Kazakh bourgeois is, but Tokayev basically keeps them in check, he himself is orientated to Moscow and Beijing.

flamming_python wrote:

Firebird wrote:https://topcor.ru/47683-kazahstan-i-uzbekistan-dvizhutsja-po-puti-sozdanija-sojuznogo-gosudarstva.html

Look at this pair of slippery bastards
Russia keeps the Kazak president in power after a coup attempt.
And now Kaz and Uzbekistan (usually big rivals) are talking about a "Union State" ie political union and military union.
Russia needs to crush this pair of wankers. Not to mention 1/3rd of "Kazakstan" was given to it in the 1950s as it was only an administrative region, not a country. In 1991 over 40 pct of Kaz. was ethnic RUssian.

This is another Pukraine in the making. Russia needs to sort this out quickly.
No Putin style "wait and see" which turned a 7 day mil operation into a 2.5 or more year one.

And what's the issue?

In fact it was the Russian elites who rejected all forms of confederation with Kazakhstan and the rest of Central Asia in the 90s; there were proposals for joint border control and border guard forces, and a common currency.
BTW at around the same time there were also proposals for a Central Asian union.

And later in the 2000s Nazarbayev was still talking about a Eurasian union of some kind (which ultimately did end up being formed as the Eurasian economic union), and was later also talking about a 'Unistan' of Central Asian states, but mainly because Moscow itself wasn't interested in closer integration.

The main problem with all such proposals from Russia's point of view, is that the Central Asian populations are growing while the Russian one is shrinking, and without the Ukraine (well now it itself is only 20-25 mil in total anyway), that would presumably give too much weight to the Muslim and Turkic populations of any united state and the result would be unpredictable. Moscow may lose control over the state that it itself has formed.
Additionally, if Russia and Central Asian countries form back into some sort of USSR type state, then demands will start to appear in time from some of Russia's internal republics to join said union as equal members themselves, rather than as part of Russia. You had such demands from Tatarstan and Bashkortostan at the end of the 80s - this was another part of the reason why the Russian elites dissolved the USSR by 1991 BTW.

I would cautiously welcome a union-state of Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan and wait to see what comes of it. Neither country is actually anti-Russian. The Kazakh bourgeois is, but Tokayev basically keeps them in check, he himself is orientated to Moscow and Beijing.

the creation of those soviet states did not make sense.
And the idiocies done in the 1990s were even worst than those

But the same would be for modern Russia also the creation of a USSR type union. Either just a vague combination of economic and military treaties (Euroasian economic Union, CSTO) or nothing at all. Russia must not repeat the same mistake.

The best would be to go back to the something more similar to the subdivision from before 1917. Fully included in the russian federation and split in various oblasts/ regions/ governatorates.

The local language should be maintained in addition to Russian (as they are maintained in bashkiria or Tatarstan), but they should not have other special privileges or advantages in comparison to other russian oblasts. Furthermore the forced kazakization campaign in what is now the north of Kazakhstan should be reverted.

If they have to be back they should be back as a bunch of oblasts and some of the territories also assigned to existing oblasts, like Orenburg.

Kazakhstan has currently 17 regions, some of the northern ones can be attached to existing russian oblasts, other combined among themselves, since there are way too many and the country is mostly desert.

For Uzbekistan similar consideration could be done (preservation of language and culture, but not of state borders and internal subdivisions), even if it is a smaller but much more densely populated country.

Actually Russia managing directly the central Asian area could also prevent conflicts in the area between ex societ countries (like Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan).

The only important thing, if Russia gets those lands back, would be not to subsidize them at a cost for russian regions, but to normally invest in them as they plan to do for each russian region without any advantages (but also without a french colonial approach).

For Russia it would be also advantageous to have another large border with China (In the north west of china instead of just in the north east of china) and would ease rail connections between Beijing and Moscow.

And possibly Russia could also at least partially revert the environmental disaster of what was the Aral sea.