Eurasianet

Out-of-touch elites, poor planning, and some signs of progress in regional trade. Our weekly Turkmenistan briefing.

Religious mores, politics and the coronavirus have cast a shadow over one of the few Kyrgyz products China buys.

In our weekly briefing: Restrictions easing, COVID denialism persists, foreign suitors come visiting in hope of business, and the latest annual horse jamboree.

Kazakh officials know they cannot be seen siding with a Chinese company.

Employers are now effectively required to demand proof of vaccinations from their workers. But the country’s health care system is now being pushed to the limit.

The government hopes to boost vaccination rates, but a new anti-vaccine campaign is on the rise.

The new rules come as the country is trying to stave off a third wave of the virus and vaccination numbers remain in the low single digits.

Bunin has also been banned from entering Uzbekistan.

Central Asia’s largest nations are using unique coronavirus vaccines that haven’t been carefully studied. Do they have a choice?

Iranians have been flooding into Armenia to get COVID vaccines, causing Tehran to complain and Yerevan to tighten the rules.

A few months ago, the thought of taking a Chinese COVID vaccine was unthinkable to Georgians. Now it’s the norm.

Abu Dhabi invests in green energy, China gets another drilling contract, and Ashgabat cuts funding to universities. This and more in our weekly Turkmenistan briefing.

Vaccine hesitancy in Uzbekistan is high, bred by social media conspiracies that seem credible in a country without accountable authorities.

Our Kazakhstan correspondent describes the waiting, the bureaucracy, and the anticlimax of getting his Sputnik V jab in Almaty.

Although Turkmenistan is rarely mentioned as a prospective member of the Moscow-led EAEU trading bloc, that notion is quite obviously on the Kremlin’s mind. Our weekly briefing.