Evan Feigenbaum, Jennifer Brick Murtazashvili, Temur Umarov, Nicole Grajewski, and Asel Doolotkeldieva focus on strategic dynamics in continental Asia and how regional players—not the United States or the transatlantic West—are driving both diplomacy and regional integration.

The Uzbek regime is losing stability because its objectives increasingly diverge from the public expectations that President Mirziyoyev himself worked to create.

The political elites of Central Asia view the invasion of Ukraine through the prism of their own interests, top of which is the preservation of their own regimes. For this reason, they will continue to show loyalty to Putin.

By continuing to rely on Russia’s ethnic minorities and foreign labor migrants to do its dirty work in Ukraine, the Kremlin is inadvertently damaging ties to its former colonies.

Some speculate that by drawing its southern neighbors into closer cooperation on gas, Russia wants to gain control over Central Asian exports to China. That won’t be easy.

Moscow had every opportunity to make the Central Asian nations gravitate toward it of their own accord. Yet now Russian soft power in Central Asia is dissipating before our eyes.