Gambling addiction has been a problem for many years in Kazakhstan, but authorities have been largely deaf to the laments of suffering relatives, until recently.
Ashgabat may hope expending energy to attain international respectability will improve its chances of tapping global financial institutions for investment.
The COVID-19 vaccination experiences of Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia show that if you’re a small and poor country, you need to rely on powerful friends.
As the president celebrates, the economic crisis deepened by a coronavirus outbreak he has refused to acknowledge has left his people in a state of Dickensian misery.