Skip to main content

Eurasianet

Main Menu

  • Regions
  • Topics
  • Media
  • About
  • Search
  • Newsletter
  • русский
  • Support us
X

Caucasus

Armenia
Azerbaijan
Georgia

Central Asia

Kazakhstan
Kyrgyzstan
Tajikistan
Turkmenistan
Uzbekistan

Conflict Zones

Abkhazia
Nagorno Karabakh
South Ossetia
Transnistria

Eastern Europe

Belarus
Moldova
Russia
The Baltics
Ukraine

Eurasian Fringe

Afghanistan
China
EU
Iran
Mongolia
Turkey
United Kingdom
United States
X

Arts and Culture

Economy

Politics

Security

Society

Coronavirus
X

Visual Stories

Audio
Interactive
Video

Blogs

Tamada Tales
The Bug Pit

Podcasts

Expert Opinions
The Central Asianist
X
You can search using keywords to narrow down the list.

Israel, Kazakhstan Propose Joint Military Exercises

Joshua Kucera Jan 21, 2014
image Kazakhstan President Nursultan Nazarbayev and Turkish President Abdullah Gul inspect an Israeli UAV during the KADEX defense exposition in Astana in 2010. (photo: The Bug Pit)

Kazakhstan's defense minister has visited Israel, where he met with officials including President Shimon Peres and discussed what seemed to be an ambitious expansion of military cooperation between the two countries. The focus of the cooperation would be training -- including Israeli soldiers conducting drills in Kazakhstan -- and Israeli technical expertise for Kazakhstan's nascent defense industry. From a Kazakhstan Ministry of Defense press release:

In the sphere of military interaction the President of Israel offered to conduct joint exercises of the Armed Forces of two countries on Kazakhstan firing fields.

In turn, [Kazakhstan Defense Minister] Adilbek Dzhaksybekov noted that Kazakhstan gives special importance to the expansion of investment and technical cooperation with Israel in military industry....

“Today the defining tendency of development of the Armed Forces of Kazakhstan is its professionalization. At the present stage changed forms and methods of warfare and applied them in armaments and military equipment require highly skilled experts - military professionals. In this context, we attach particular importance to the possibility of studying the experience of combat training of the Armed Forces of Israel,” the Minister of Defence of Kazakhstan noted.

Representatives from state defense manufacturer Kazakhstan Engineering also visited Israeli defense contractors. Kazakhstan has recently expressed interest in drones from Israel as part of its broad expansion of weaponry suppliers. But only major defense deal to date between the two countries did not end well: after Kazakhstan bought nearly $200 million of artillery and rockets from Israel in 2006-7, some of the equipment turned out to be defective. Kazakhstan's deputy defense minister was imprisoned on abuse of power charges and the defense minister lost his job -- all at a cost to Kazakhstan's government of $82 million.

Joshua Kucera is the Turkey/Caucasus editor at Eurasianet, and author of The Bug Pit.

Sign up for Eurasianet's free weekly newsletter. Support Eurasianet: Help keep our journalism open to all, and influenced by none.

Popular

Post-war report: Pashinyan misfired with insult of Russian missiles
Joshua Kucera
Protest, prison and politics: The making of an activist in Kazakhstan
Joanna Lillis
Kazakhstan: New large oil field discovered in Caspian region
Almaz Kumenov

Eurasianet

  • About
  • Team
  • Contribute
  • Republishing
  • Privacy Policy
  • Corrections
  • Contact
Eurasianet © 2021