Ashgabat may hope expending energy to attain international respectability will improve its chances of tapping global financial institutions for investment.
Together with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Nikol Pashinyan and Ilham Aliyev signed an agreement to create new transportation infrastructure aimed at “unblocking” the region’s many closed borders.
Azerbaijan said that its shooting down of a Russian helicopter was an accident. But now Russia reportedly wants the case to be investigated as a murder.
A new documentary on a Soviet soccer star also tells the story of Central Asia’s ethnic Korean community, which was deported en masse to the region by Stalin.
The new fighting was an early test for the Russian peacekeeping mission as it tries to manage a new, ambiguous de facto border that passes through populated areas.
Moscow at first responded to the war cautiously, but was in the end forced to intervene decisively. Was this a geopolitical coup or was Moscow’s hand forced?