This briefing explores government policy and food provision in the Caucasus and Central Asia as COVID-19 upsets farming and trade networks around the world.
Even with coronavirus serving as a belated impetus to push through long-stalled reforms, the five members of the Eurasian Economic Union show limited willingness to help each other.
Some enterprising souls have seized the moment to keep their businesses alive. Their main problem now is government flip-flopping and bureaucratic hurdles.
The legislation allows authorities to freeze property acquired with suspicious funds. Now they want access to bank and insurance information without a court order.
Kazakhstan is still far from being the developed market economy its leaders pine for. And the current crisis risks shunting the country back toward a more traditional, state-directed stance.
Instead of being transparent about the economic crisis, the president is, in the manner of an unaccountable manager incapable of long-term planning, trying to do the same with less.
