Central Asian presidents meet

RUSSIA / FSU POLITICS - In Brief 22 Jul 2022 by Alex Teddy
On July the presidents of the five countries met in Kyrgyzstan. They held talks about political and economic cooperation. The summit was called the Fourth Consultative Meeting of the Heads of States of Central Asia. Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Tajikistan have seen demonstrations in 2022. They realize they may need to help each other with such eventualities in future. Russia might be unable or unwilling to do so.  Russia was the regional hegemon for 200 years. But that might be ending. The Russian military is struggling in Ukraine. Russia's economy is due to contract at least 12% in 2022. This has impacted Central Asia, which has close commercial ties to Russia. But an impoverished and militarily enfeebled Russia is less able to project power in the region. Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Kazakhstan are CSTO allies of Russia. But if Russia cannot defeat Ukraine, is it a worthy ally? Moreover, Kazakhstan feels worried that Russia will try to take some of its land.  Ironically, Russia's attempt to enhance its influence in the former USSR by invading Ukraine may have wrought the precise opposite. The decline of Russian influence in Central Asia was observable for 20 years but the Ukraine War has accelerated that process. Russia has blocked Kazakh access to the Caspian Pipeline Consortium thrice in 2022. This is presumably to penalize them for not supporting Russia over Ukraine. Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan refused to recognize Luhansk and Donetsk as independent countries. Kazakhstan is openly looking for alternative energy export routes to bypass Russia. Central Asia had at least four million guest workers in Russia in 2019. Many of them lost their jobs in 2020 due to the pandemic ...

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