At a time when relations between Russia and the West are at an all-time low because of Moscow’s meddling in Ukraine and Syria, Kazakhstan is finding it increasingly complicated to preserve the balance. In the span of a week this month (October 2015), Kazakhstani President Nursultan Nazarbayev met, in Astana, with his visiting counterparts from Ukraine and Russia. The back-to-back visits to Kazakhstan by President Petro Poroshenko of Ukraine and President Vladimir Putin of Russia represent a much deeper geopolitical balancing act for Astana than just trying to maintain warm relations with these two countries, which have been locked in …read more
Source: The Jamestown Foundation