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74 Opinion
bne March 2023
Sadyr Japarov from a jail cell to the presidency in 2021 saw Kyrgyz institutions taken over by a populist nationalist with little appetite for Western democracy promotion, and an affinity for the strong-man image of Putinist politics. Tajikistan was dominated by President Emomali Rahmon, who was long closely aligned with Moscow but whose position was shifted even further in Russia’s favour by the 2021 withdrawal of US forces from Afghanistan. Russia deployed reinforcements to Tajikistan in December 2021.
However, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan clashed repeatedly throughout 2022 amid a dispute over their shared and poorly demarcated border. But Russia – which has bases in both countries – was preoccupied with Putin’s war in Ukraine
and made no meaningful intervention. Its major base in Tajikistan also reportedly saw troops drained for the fight in Ukraine. By October 2022, Rahmon himself publicly rebuked Putin, demanding more “respect” for Central Asian countries. Kyrgyzstan called on the CSTO to undertake a monitoring mission along the border. While the organisation has said it would be willing to do so, Tajikistan refused the offer. Russia’s war in Ukraine has limited its ability to police even the parts of Central Asia most dependent on Russian power.
Turkmenistan stands as a case apart. Nominally neutral, it is not a member of any of the Russian-led blocs in the region. Russia pursued a policy in the two years before 2022 of resuming some Turkmen gas purchases to try and provide
a new economic basis to their relations after purchases fell precipitously following a mysterious explosion in 2009 and ended completely in 2016. But with Russia now facing a surfeit of its own gas, there is little hope Moscow will be buying much gas from Ashgabat any time soon.
Instead, Turkmenistan has turned to re-engaging with the idea of building a trans-Caspian link bringing its gas to the West via Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey. Turkish President
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Recep Tayyip Erdogan – whose strategic position vis-à-vis Russia has also greatly increased as a result of Putin’s attacks on Ukraine – even endorsed the idea in December. While that is no guarantee the pipeline will ever materialise – Russia retains a veto under the 2018 Convention on the Legal Status of the Caspian Sea – it does indicate that even leaders willing to work with Russia, like Erdogan, recognise that Russia’s position in Central Asia has diminished. Nevertheless, it remains doubtful Turkmenistan’s government will go far enough in reaching out to the West, as it prefers to deal with a fellow repressive and kleptocratic regime in Moscow.
Last year marked the beginning of the end of Russia’s near- total dominance in Central Asia. The longer Putin’s war on Ukraine continues and the more stringent the international sanctions regime becomes, the greater its impact will be. The geography of the region means that its countries cannot move away from Russia entirely, of course, and some suspect that Central Asian trade has helped Moscow evade sanctions. The region may still be Russia’s backyard, but the gardener is absent – and it increasingly appears that there is little desire for him to return. A new era for Central Asia has begun, and the absence of a regional hegemon means that it is much more likely to be turbulent and possibly deadly.
Maximilian Hess is a London-based political risk consultant and a fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute (FPRI). You can follow him on Twitter @zakavkaza and pre-order his forthcoming book, Economic War: Ukraine and the Global Conflict Between Russia and the West, from Amazon.
The article originally appeared on the FPRI website (www.fpri.org). The views expressed in this article are those of the author alone and do not necessarily reflect the position of the FPRI, a non-partisan organisation that seeks to publish well-argued, policy-oriented articles on American foreign policy and national security priorities.
Ukraine might lose the war this summer unless West gives it more offensive weapons now
Ben Aris in Berlin
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has been travelling to London, France and Brussels in recent days to plead with the west to give him more weapons, specifically to give him jet fighters now that a battalion of modern main battle tanks (MBTs) has been promised.
Unless the West agrees and also speeds up the delivery of the
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tanks, Ukraine is in danger of losing the war against Russia this summer – “losing” in the sense that Russia is expected to surge its military efforts with a fresh call up and threatens to overwhelm Ukraine’s heroic forces, complete it capture
of greater Donbas region, when Russian President Vladimir Putin can declare a victory and freeze the conflict. Ukraine is already running low on the critically important ammunition,