In the years before independence, Stepnogorsk had become a key node in Moscow’s biological weapons program and uranium industry. Now it is one of many Kazakh provincial towns framed by its Soviet legacy.
Ever since the start to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, anything with the slightest whiff of separatism in Kazakhstan has elicited a harsh crackdown. Except this time.
Russian officials and propagandists had several reactions to the recent crisis in Georgia: gloating, echoing the Georgian government's rhetoric, and casually threatening to bomb Tbilisi into the ground.
Armenians had been using the road to bypass a blockade on the main road, the Lachin Corridor. The move drew a rare rebuke from the Russian peacekeepers.
The U.S. and Russia have both made high-level contact with Armenian and Azerbaijani officials as the rhetoric from Baku is getting increasingly bellicose.
It was unclear on whose behalf the former secretary general, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, was visiting, and what it portended for Armenia’s geopolitical orientation.