The region's already meager electricity generation capacity is in jeopardy, and an "environmental disaster" could be at hand, the local de facto authorities say.
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.
While the country's authoritarian rulers are utterly indifferent to political freedoms, how the investment regime is perceived is another matter. Our weekly Turkmenistan briefing.