Mongolian filmmaker Lkhagvadulam Purev-Ochir speaks to Novastan about filming Ulaanbaatar, the country’s apartment obsession, masculinity and spirituality, and why contemporary Mongolia needs to be seen as more than folklore.

International images of Mongolia are still dominated by the steppe: horses, yurts, nomadic herders and vast landscapes. The films of Lkhagvadulam Purev-Ochir look somewhere else.

Her characters inhabit apartment blocks, bedrooms, cars, schools and the sprawling neighbourhoods of Ulaanbaatar. They worry about housing and money, negotiate sex and relationships, struggle with expectations placed on young men and women, and move between a rapidly changing urban Mongolia and older cultural and spiritual reference points.

Read more on Novastan: “Mongolia cannot be understood through one lens”: Dr. Mendee Jargalsaikhan on democracy, China and Central Asia

Purev-Ochir has emerged as one of the most distinctive voices in contemporary Mongolian cinema. After studying film direction and screenwriting, she attracted international attention with the shorts Mountain Cat, Snow in September and A South-Facing Window. Her first feature, City of Wind, continued her exploration of young Mongolians navigating the tensions between modern urban life, family, desire and spirituality.

Yet her films are not simply portraits of Ulaanbaatar. Purev-Ochir describes the city itself as something difficult to capture: a place that, on screen, repeatedly becomes an “inner landscape”. Her interest lies in transitions – between adolescence and adulthood, intimacy and isolation, the physical and spiritual worlds, and different ways of imagining what it means to be Mongolian.

These tensions are also playing out on a much larger scale. Mongolia has experienced extraordinarily rapid transformations across successive generations: communism, democratisation, globalisation and now the internet and artificial intelligence. Ulaanbaatar’s relentless expansion has made housing both an aspiration and a source of frustration, while the country’s international image remains closely associated with a nomadic culture from which many urban Mongolians have become physically removed.

Read more on Novastan: “The idea of having choices was so new”: Oyungerel Tsedevdamba on Mongolia’s democracy 36 years later

For Purev-Ochir, cinema offers a way to explore these contradictions without resolving them. Speaking to Novastan, she discusses why apartment ownership has become the Mongolian “dream and nightmare”, why she worries that Mongolians themselves are orientalising their culture, what shamanism means in contemporary urban life, and why she hopes a new generation might eventually imagine a different relationship between Mongolia’s cities and countryside.

Novastan: Before we talk about the films themselves, could you tell us a little about your own path into filmmaking? What was your background, when did cinema become something you wanted to pursue seriously, and were there particular filmmakers, writers, artists or experiences that shaped you early on?

Lkhagvadulam Purev-Ochir: Apart from the initial decision to study filmmaking, which was full of psychological drama because I was cutting ties with what my parents had envisioned for my future, I had a pretty straightforward and traditional path in filmmaking.

I studied for my bachelor’s in film direction and master’s in screenwriting, and subsequently, upon graduating from my master’s, I made two short films which did very well at festivals. My first feature film, City of Wind, came out exactly five years after my graduation. I had written the script during my master’s in screenwriting.

I made the decision to go into filmmaking and not pursue medicine like my mother because watching films and thinking about them was one of the only true pleasures in my life. I couldn’t imagine my early adulthood doing anything else and made the “bold” – or lazy – decision to go into filmmaking.

When I made this decision, I was purely a film watcher. I had no knowledge about how films were made, no idea about montage, and no previous idea of what a film set was like.

How would you describe yourself as a filmmaker today? What kinds of stories, characters or tensions do you find yourself returning to, and what do you think you are still trying to understand through cinema?

I’ve noticed so far through my films that I wish to capture transitions and states of movement with cinema – specifically in the inner worlds and impressions of people. People who are more at war with themselves and their feelings than with external characters. Or people whose inner states are conflicting with exterior states, and the transition between these states.

I like these transitory situations and feelings and contradictions. I prefer autumn and spring to summer and winter, for example. Autumn and spring are seasons that fight with themselves; there is tension and vast change from day to day and even between day and night.

In Mongolia in autumn, it can feel like summer in the day and winter at night. There is conflict in temperatures, in expression and in affect. These seasons feel more reflective and reflexive. I think with cinema, I wish to capture something seasonal like this.

Across the three shorts, Ulaanbaatar seems to change with the age and situation of your characters. In Mountain Cat it is a place of adolescence and possibility, in Snow in September it feels more enclosed and unsettling, and in A South-Facing Window adulthood seems almost physically trapped by apartments, traffic and financial pressure. Do you see these films as capturing different stages of growing up in the same city?

I think it could be said like that. It’s true that the characters in my films are growing up – my next film is about a man in his mid-30s.

On a different note, I find Ulaanbaatar strangely difficult to “capture” on camera. It’s a wide, steppe city spread out across a large valley. Even neighbourhoods which are more enclosed feel open and exposed.

I feel that on the screen Ulaanbaatar is not very geometric and more landscape-like. And it gives a feeling of something more timeless and affective rather than something specific and geographic.

I tried to depict Ulaanbaatar this way – to make it very characteristic and to connect its different spaces to different plot points and characters. But try as I might, the city always feels more like an inner landscape than an active location.

In A South-Facing Window, the couple seem to be searching for a better life through real estate – visiting empty apartments and imagining another home. You have also described an apartment in central Ulaanbaatar as part of a kind of “Mongolian dream”. What interested you about housing as a symbol of aspiration, and do you think that dream still captures what younger Mongolians want today?

Housing is the Mongolian Dream/Nightmare par excellence.

Because of our nomadic background, the idea of real estate as individual wealth is relatively new. I think my grandparents’ generation was the first generation that slowly started to pursue living in apartments because it was more “civilised” and meant that you were part of the state – only state workers got apartments then.

At the moment, all Mongolians are attempting to buy apartments because it’s an absolute “must” of modern life. And somehow it is thought of as the solution to all modern problems, as a status symbol, and a sign that everything is “alright”.

When, on the contrary, the cause of all of Ulaanbaatar’s problems is this inflated housing sector and rampant construction fever.

Read more on Novastan: Keeping the heat in: Mongolia’s overlooked answer to Ulaanbaatar’s air pollution

I think only when this “greed” for apartments finishes will a new “dream” for Mongolians appear. And hopefully our New Mongolian Dream will be a dream that focuses on the countryside and our nomadic core.

I don’t think we will ever be alright as a country and as a people unless we are nomadic in some form or another. This new form has to be dreamt of and created. The traditional nomadic way of living is too far outside the new generations’ reality.

But I know of many under-30 Mongolians who want to live in the countryside, outside of the fever that is Ulaanbaatar, myself included. So this “dream” is slowly changing.

Your films pay enormous attention to physical space: Soviet apartment blocks, ger districts, cars, bedrooms, unfinished or empty apartments. How consciously do you use architecture and urban space to reveal class, intimacy or power between people?

I think space is connected to the inner lives of my characters. How my characters relate to the spaces they find themselves in is part of how they feel about themselves and how they position themselves in the world.

The spaces are not just a place where the stories are set. They’re part of the characters and their truths.

In Snow in September, the intimate encounter between Davka and the older woman is deeply uncomfortable because the imbalance of power is obvious, yet the film never over-explains it. You have spoken about realising that “the camera was a weapon” when deciding how to film that scene. Has making that film changed how you think about the ethics of showing intimacy, particularly when working with young actors?

This film helped me understand the relationship between the camera and me as the filmmaker – to understand some things about my presence and my voice. About film as a responsibility, but also as a language.

Images are part of the grammar of what I am “saying” with the film, so I must be precise with them. And be aware of what I am saying, when I am saying it, how I am saying it, and why I am saying it.

Hopefully as I age and mature, this relationship between me and the camera becomes clearer to me and my films become more “precise”.

Male vulnerability appears in striking ways in your films. Davka in Snow in September is inexperienced and manipulated, while Shagai in A South-Facing Window seems frustrated, insecure and unable to articulate what is happening to his marriage. Are you particularly interested in forms of masculinity that do not fit more conventional images of Mongolian men?

I think because I am a female filmmaker, I will always depict masculinity from a non-orthodox angle. I don’t think I am overtly interested in unconventional depictions of masculinity.

I think that my personal relationship to masculinity is quite flawed and filled with insecurity. And naturally it is felt in my films.

Interestingly, my next film includes the theme of masculinity. I’ve been thinking quite a lot about the men in my life and my relationship to my son. And so let’s see how my next film turns out.

In Mountain Cat, shamanism is brought into a very ordinary contemporary setting rather than being presented as something exotic or separate from modern life. How does spirituality actually coexist with urban, educated and globally connected Mongolia in your own experience?

I heard some time ago that we are not physical beings that sometimes become interested in shamanism or spirituality or religion. On the contrary, we are spiritual beings dealing with a physical world. I quite agree with this.

I think before anything we are spiritual beings. Humans are innately spiritual. And to be connected to spirituality is a matter of “perspective” or “angle” or “choosing a timeline”, as the kids say.

Not just in Mongolia but throughout the world, living a spiritual life is a matter of closing your eyes and opening your eyes and choosing what you will experience and how you see things. It sounds overly simplistic, but profound things are actually quite simple.

I think Mongolians are very lucky in that we still have access to ancient practices that allow us to experience our spirituality. Modern Mongolians have this access and can turn to shamanism – comprised of spirit worship and nature worship – when the physical world is overwhelming or empty.

It’s not a choose-one-way-or-the-other kind of situation. We have access to the physical and the spiritual.

You have mentioned that your parents speak Russian while you and your sisters speak English, and that Korean has become increasingly attractive to younger Mongolians. What do these changing linguistic and cultural reference points tell us about generational change in Mongolia? Do they affect how generations understand one another?

Since my grandparents’ generation, major socio-political and cultural changes have happened – communism in my grandparents’ time, democracy during my parents’ time, globalism during my time, and now, in the newer generations, the internet and AI.

These are major shifts in the human experience and social order. Since the 1980s, each decade has been so different from the previous one that there is certainly a gap between the generations that ultimately translates into the question of identity.

My films are, in a way, an attempt at understanding and expressing our identity through our lived experiences and relationships.

Mongolia is still often represented internationally through the steppe, nomadism, horses and spectacular landscapes. Your films are much more interested in apartments, traffic, schools, bedrooms and the outskirts of Ulaanbaatar. Do you ever feel that simply showing ordinary urban Mongolia is itself a way of pushing back against how the country is imagined abroad?

I actually have a problem with how Mongolia is portrayed, not necessarily by foreigners, but by how we Mongolians portray ourselves.

We have started to glamorise and orientalise our own culture because that is what foreigners value. Our relationship to our culture is becoming a “simulation” because we are relating more with signs and symbols of what being a Mongolian means rather than actually having a lived relationship to our own culture.

I do push back against this idea and against the simplistic image that Mongolia has in the collective consciousness.

I wish Mongolia had a more humane and more literal presence in the collective consciousness – not like folklore. With my films, I aim to put Mongolia in the modern collective consciousness – as a real people, with a real country, and a real presence.

You have said that being away from Mongolia sometimes allows you to see the country more clearly. What changes in your relationship with Mongolia when you leave it – and what do you notice first when you come back?

I feel that my relationship to Mongolia is actually strengthened when I am away because I miss it and yearn for my family in Mongolia.

When I am away, I am able to think more deeply and in a more concentrated manner about the core ideas I have in my films. When I am in Mongolia, I am more distracted and de-centred. I am more inspired by the characters, the specific scenes, conversations, colours and smells.

So I feel that my relationship to my script and my film is enriched by the nomadic relationship I have with my country.

When I first go back, I am always transported back to when I was 10 years old – the first time I left the country. I feel that whenever I return, I return to the feelings of that girl – a girl who had never left Mongolia yet and who felt like no other place in the world existed or mattered.

Which Mongolian cultural work – a film, book, album, artist or even a place – do you wish more people outside Mongolia knew about, and why?

I wish that more people knew of the particular existence of the Gobi Desert. It’s a very fragile and harsh geography that produces the best singers of Mongolia.

Through song, the people survive and they soften the landscape and their lives.

I think many people have heard of the film The Story of the Weeping Camel. I think that this land has to be protected more, especially now with mining and uranium.

Read more on Novastan: Bolor Lkhaajav: “Mongolia does not need to choose between Russia and China”

It’s a vulnerable land, sparsely populated, so more care and attention must be given due to its fragility and exploitability.

By Mathieu Lemoine, Editor-in-Chief for Novastan English.

The post Lkhagvadulam Purev-Ochir: “Housing is the Mongolian dream – and nightmare” appeared first on Novastan English.

Born in Latvia and raised in Kazakhstan, Lena Wolf grew up with fragments of a history that Soviet society rarely discussed openly. In her graphic memoir, she retraces the deportation of her German family to Kazakhstan, their struggle to preserve language and identity, and her own journey from Aktobe to Germany.

For our readers in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan:

Lena Wolf’s e-book is now available at reduced regional prices on Google Play Books in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan.

Available in English and Russian.

For much of her childhood, Lena Wolf believed that all Germans came from Kazakhstan.

Aktobe was home. Her grandmother cooked German dishes alongside baursaki and manti, organised clandestine religious gatherings and spoke German to her grandchildren, even when they answered her in Russian. Around them lived families whose own histories had been shaped by deportation, repression and displacement.

Yet Wolf also learned early that being German could set her apart.

“I don’t think I really understood what being German meant to other people until I was called a fascist for the first time,” she recalls. “I was probably about six.”

Decades later, Wolf began piecing together the family history that had reached her in fragments behind closed doors. The result was a graphic memoir illustrated by Christoph Heuer, tracing almost two centuries of migration, persecution and repeated attempts to build a home.

Her grandmother Emilia was 25 when she was deported to Kazakhstan in 1941 with two young children. Like many Soviet Germans, the family initially believed the displacement might be temporary.

“They left behind their houses, land, animals – everything – still hoping they would return,” Wolf says.

They never did.

Even after Stalin-era special-settlement restrictions were lifted in 1955, Soviet Germans were not allowed to return to the areas from which they had been deported. Emilia eventually built a new life in Aktobe.

“Kazakhstan did become home for her, partly because she knew she could never return to her village in Ukraine,” Wolf says. “She found her people there and had her family around her.”

The contradiction would become central to Wolf’s understanding of her family history: Kazakhstan was both a place of forced exile and the country in which several generations of the family made their lives.

“Somewhere along the way, she too became a German from Kazakhstan.”

Growing up German in Soviet Kazakhstan

For Wolf herself, Kazakhstan carried no such ambiguity during childhood.

“For me, Kazakhstan was simply home. I didn’t know anything else,” she says. “In fact, when I was very little, I thought all Germans came from Kazakhstan.”

Read more on Novastan: Beyond any borders: a new multicultural generation in Kazakhstan

Her family’s German identity nevertheless remained clearly marked in Soviet society.

Official documents continued to identify Soviet Germans as nemets or nemka, even as German-language education, religious life and much of the community’s institutional culture had been suppressed.

“You were expected to stop being German, but you were never allowed to forget that you were German,” Wolf says.

In her family, survival meant avoiding attention. Her father’s advice was encapsulated in the Russian expression тише воды, ниже травы – “quieter than water, lower than grass.”

“Don’t attract attention. Don’t stand out. That was how you survived.”

Wolf remembers the word “German” being routinely associated with “fascist”, decades after the Second World War. Soviet Germans’ own experience of deportation and repression was largely absent from the history taught in schools.

“When you don’t know the history, you fill the gaps with your own explanations,” she says. “So people assumed that because we had been deported, we must have been guilty. The deportation itself became proof of our guilt.”

As a child, she even changed her surname when helping an elderly Soviet woman whose husband and son had died during the war.

“I invented another name for myself: Volkova instead of Wolf.”

The Russian name, she says, became a form of protection.

When Russian became the common language

Language is another thread running through Wolf’s memoir.

Her grandmother spoke German to her; Wolf usually answered in Russian. She later recognised almost exactly the same pattern among Kazakh families: grandparents speaking Kazakh while younger generations responded in Russian.

“When that happens, it isn’t only language that gets lost,” Wolf says. “Stories, traditions and knowledge can no longer be passed on in the same way.”

She remembers receiving some Kazakh-language teaching at school but says it was far too limited for children to become proficient.

Russian, meanwhile, dominated education, television and popular culture.

“You didn’t necessarily have to force children to speak Russian,” she says. “Education, television, culture and opportunities were in Russian, while Kazakh was often seen as old-fashioned or backward. Of course children were going to choose Russian.”

Read more on Novastan: The Lexicon of Kazakh Decolonisation

Looking back, she says she is glad to see the Kazakh language gaining greater prominence today.

A garden as survival – and as home

One image reappears throughout Wolf’s family history: the garden.

Her ancestors had originally migrated eastward to work the land. After deportation, a garden helped her grandmother and a neighbour survive wartime shortages. Decades later, during Wolf’s own childhood in Kazakhstan, home-grown food helped sustain the family when Soviet shops were empty.

But the garden came to represent more than food.

Wolf recounts the story of her father, whose mother was sentenced to the Gulag after attempting to leave the deportation zone and return to Ukraine. He was sent to an orphanage in Zaporizhzhia shortly after the war.

One teacher once invited him to her home for dinner. While she cooked, he played in the garden with her son.

“He remembers standing there among the flowers and plants and realising, for the first time, that the world was beautiful,” Wolf says.

The memory remained with him throughout his life.

Now 91, he can no longer maintain a large garden but still cares for flowers on his balcony in Offenbach, Germany.

“Perhaps that is what a garden means in our family,” Wolf says. “It feeds you when there is nothing to eat, but it also gives you beauty when there isn’t much beauty around you. And wherever you end up, you can plant something and make that place your own.”

A ‘return’ to a country they did not know

In 1989, Wolf and her family left Kazakhstan for Germany.

Officially, such migration was often presented as a return to an ancestral homeland. In practice, Wolf discovered that Germany was another unfamiliar country.

“What surprised me most was that in Germany I wasn’t seen as German,” she says.

“After everything our families had gone through in the Soviet Union because they were German – persecution, discrimination and sometimes literally fighting for survival – we arrived in Germany and suddenly we were foreigners.”

At 17, Wolf initially tried to assimilate as completely as possible. She stopped speaking Russian, avoided food associated with her Soviet childhood and even began using the name Helene.

Inside the family home, however, the opposite transformation was taking place.

“In Kazakhstan my parents had tried to preserve what was German,” she recalls. “In Germany, suddenly they started cooking the food they missed from Kazakhstan – plov, beshbarmak, baursaki.”

Read more on Novastan: Between integration and inheritance: How Armenians in Uzbekistan are redefining community

Wolf eventually realised that Kazakhstan could not simply be removed from her identity.

“I am a German from Kazakhstan.”

It is a formulation she prefers to the widely used German term Russlanddeutsche, or “Russian Germans”.

Wolf points out that neither she nor her parents lived in Russia. Her family had lived in Ukraine before deportation to Kazakhstan, while earlier generations had been Germans of the Russian Empire.

“The term also hides how diverse these German communities actually were,” she says. Germans deported to Kazakhstan came from Ukraine, the Volga region, Crimea, the Caucasus and elsewhere.

“For myself, I simply say: I am a German from Kazakhstan.”

Turning fragments into a history

Wolf’s decision to tell the story as a graphic memoir was partly motivated by younger generations of her own family.

Her nieces and nephews had grown up in Germany knowing little about the experiences of their grandparents and great-grandparents. She wanted to make the history accessible without reducing its complexity.

Works such as Maus and Persepolis showed her that graphic narrative could make difficult histories accessible across generations.

Some experiences, she says, were also easier to communicate visually.

“I could describe in a few sentences how people were transported for weeks in overcrowded trains, cold and hungry, and how people died along the way. But I wanted readers to see their faces, the exhaustion, the desperation and the conditions in which they were deported.”

Illustrator Christoph Heuer eventually drew more than 1,200 panels by hand, reconstructing historical environments from photographs and other archival material.

For Wolf, the research also transformed her understanding of the stories her grandmother had told her.

As a child, she had regarded them almost as dangerous family secrets: accounts of famine, deportation and death that contradicted what was being taught publicly.

“Who do you believe – your grandmother or your country and your teachers?” Wolf asks. “That’s quite a big decision for a child to make.”

Researching the memoir made her realise not only how much her grandmother had told her, but how much she had withheld in an attempt to protect her.

It also changed Wolf’s understanding of resistance.

Her grandmother’s defiance was not dramatic. It meant continuing to practise religion in secret, speaking German to her grandchildren, preparing traditional food and preserving family memories despite decades of pressure to assimilate.

“Her resistance wasn’t loud,” Wolf says. “It was quiet and persistent.”

Writing the book ultimately turned inherited fragments into a coherent family history.

“I think I had to write this book to understand who I am,” she says.

The answer to the question that once troubled her – “Where are you from?” – now comes easily.

“My answer is very simple: I am a German from Kazakhstan. And now I know what came before me.”

By Mathieu Lemoine, Editor-in-Chief for Novastan English.

The post ‘I am a German from Kazakhstan’: Lena Wolf on deportation, memory and finding home appeared first on Novastan English.

Formed in Ulaanbaatar in 2023, Dotor Khuree blends Mongolian musical traditions with avant-pop, jazz, rock and other contemporary influences. In this interview with Novastan Editor-in-Chief Mathieu Lemoine, the band discusses its latest EP, the independent music scene in Ulaanbaatar and what it means to make distinctly Mongolian music today.

Mongolian music has gained growing international visibility in recent years, but outside the country it is still often associated primarily with the morin khuur, throat singing and other immediately recognisable traditional forms.

Ulaanbaatar-based band Dotor Khuree is exploring another path.

Formed in April 2023 by musicians who met at the Mongolian State University of Arts and Culture, the group describes its sound as avant-pop, post-ethno and poly-genre. Its members draw on Mongolian long song, regional folk traditions and the musical vocabulary of instruments such as the morin khuur, while largely expressing those influences through contemporary instrumentation.

The band released its debut LP, Zarimdaa Zuils, in September 2025, followed by the self-titled Dotor Khuree EP in May 2026. The latter pushed the musicians further towards what they describe as a distinctly Mongolian sound achieved without directly using traditional instruments.

Novastan spoke with the members of Dotor Khuree about Mongolian musical identity, experimentation, Ulaanbaatar’s independent scene and their ambitions beyond Mongolia.

Novastan: Could you introduce Dotor Khuree to readers who may be discovering you for the first time? How did the band come together, and what brought you to the kind of music you make today?

Dotor Khuree: Mandaa: Dotor Khuree was formed on 12 April 2023 and consists of six musicians and two crew members – our band manager and sound engineer – making eight members in total. We are an avant-pop, post-ethno, poly-genre band.

The band was first founded by our bassist Gombojav and me, Narmandakh, the keyboardist. We then started adding our other bandmates: vocalist Tsetsen, guitarist Orgil, sound engineer Enkhdalai, pianist Batzaya and drummer Chultemjamts. Our last addition was our band manager, Oyuntulkhuur, or Roxy.

The band members all met at the Mongolian State University of Arts and Culture and were already friends.

The main calling to start making the music we aim to make today began with my childhood and my deep love for Mongolian long songs and the morin khuur while growing up in the countryside. The older I got, the more that love grew, and I aspired to incorporate traditional musical elements into my own music.

After forming the band, I told the others about the kind of Mongolian music I wanted to make, and all our members received the idea with real enthusiasm. That was how the basis of Dotor Khuree’s present sound came to be.

Another important factor was definitely our university mentors and teachers, who inspired and encouraged us to stay close to our Mongolian musical roots and stressed the importance of contributing to their development. That was something that really stayed with us.

One of the things that immediately stood out to me was that your music can sound distinctly Mongolian even when you are using primarily contemporary instruments. How consciously do you think about creating a “Mongolian” sound?

Mandaa: It is definitely a very conscious decision. Because we all love Mongolian music so much, we strongly believe that it is entirely possible to make our sound distinctly Mongolian without using traditional instruments.

That is why we spend so much of our rehearsal time coming up with new ideas about how to achieve that. The song ideas usually come from me, and from there we collaborate as a team, discussing arrangements and musical timbres with the shared goal of creating a distinctly Mongolian sound using contemporary instruments.

We feel that this goal is now gradually coming to life. We are really happy that you noticed it.

What musical traditions, older songs or sounds from Mongolia have influenced Dotor Khuree most strongly? When you reinterpret traditional or older material, how do you decide what to preserve and what to transform?

Gomboo: So many Mongolian musical traditions influence us. Long songs, or urtiin duu, and the morin khuur have so many different varieties. The techniques and sounds vary from region to region: the far western regions of Mongolia have very distinctive sounds, while the Gobi provinces have something different again. That is always very inspiring.

Several of our songs reflect those nuances of Mongolian folk music and long song.

For example, when reinterpreting and rearranging the folk song Shiree Nuur, we made it sound nothing like the original. We shortened the lyrics, using only the first two lines and leaving more room for the listener’s interpretation. The song’s vocal accent in particular blended exceptionally well with our female vocalist’s tone.

Rather than directly copying tradition, we wanted to express it through our own unique musical language.

Could you tell us about your latest EP? What ideas connect the tracks, and how does it differ from your earlier work?

Gomboo: It is always interesting for us to make music using traditional vocal styles and a Mongolian feel, while adding our own modern elements. While making this kind of music, it almost feels as though something awakens within us.

In fact, the Dotor Khuree EP can be described as “our awakened spirit”. Through this EP, compared with our Zarimdaa Zuils LP, we express even more strongly our connection to our national culture and heritage – something that is always close to our hearts.

Roxy: On our debut LP, Zarimdaa Zuils, the band explored a wider range of genres, even dipping into jazz fusion and bossa nova, so the record is more poly-genre.

On the Dotor Khuree EP, the band continued exploring the original idea that began with songs such as Shiree Nuur and Ertnii Saikhan on the first LP. At its core, that has always been about creating a distinct Mongolian sound with a Dotor Khuree feel.

Is there a particular song on the EP that you feel best represents what Dotor Khuree is trying to do musically? Could you take us through how that track developed?

Mandaa: Every song on the EP expresses the direction we want to take with our future sound, but especially Ergen Dervene, the album intro.

The song includes many elements of Mongolian musical traditions, such as folk-song elements, ritual chants, biyelgee – traditional Mongolian dance rhythms – and circular dancing motifs.

The lyrics were co-written by singer Tsetsen and keyboardist Narmandakh, who also finalised the composition, while the entire band collaborated on the production.

The composition is vocal-oriented, with the voice playing the main role and the other musical instruments supporting the central melody.

Roxy: We also recently finished a very creative and interesting project translating the song’s lyrics into English, with help from our friend Unurjargal, who is a book and film translator – a big shout-out to her.

Her interpretation might give listeners even more insight into the song. She translated the title as Spreading Wings.

Another of our favourites is Nariin Saihan Heer. The lyrics come from a Mongolian folk song of the same name, but the music is an entirely new Dotor Khuree composition. The title translates as The Fine Bay Horse, but the meaning of the song goes much deeper.

There is often an expectation outside Mongolia that “Mongolian music” should involve instruments such as the morin khuur or techniques such as throat singing. Do you ever feel that international audiences have a narrow idea of what Mongolian music is supposed to sound like?

Roxy: I wouldn’t call it narrow, maybe just a little outdated, because the morin khuur and throat singing can themselves be used in so many different experimental ways, which sadly is not being done that much.

It is always important for artists to give listeners something they never expected.

What is the independent music scene in Ulaanbaatar like today? Are there particular venues, festivals, labels or communities that have been especially important in allowing alternative music to develop?

Mandaa: Ulaanbaatar has a small but active independent music scene.

There are live music venues such as NarBar Live House, Fat Cat Jazz Club and 78 MusicBar, festivals such as Playtime, music communities such as Sonsloo, and labels like Aydu Records, all contributing to the spread of contemporary sounds.

Do you feel that a recognisable contemporary Ulaanbaatar sound or musical identity is emerging, or is the scene too diverse to describe in those terms?

Mandaa: The scene has become more diverse in recent years, so it is definitely difficult to describe the sound in those terms because the artists are all so different.

I think the lyrics, regardless of the sound, will always remain distinctly unique, because it is very difficult to translate Mongolian poetry and phrasing into English or other languages while preserving their original depth.

How easy is it to sustain an independent band in Mongolia? What are the main practical challenges – recording, rehearsal spaces, venues, financing, reaching audiences?

Orgil: Of course, it is not easy to be an independent band in Mongolia. The biggest challenge is financial sustainability.

Some of our band members have full-time jobs alongside playing in the band. Even if our music gains more recognition and reaches more listeners, that does not guarantee us stable sponsorship.

Finding rehearsal spaces with good acoustics and monitoring setups is also a constant struggle, so we do our absolute best with what we have at the moment.

Maybe if we had enough funding, we could deliver higher-quality productions, record in professional studios and reach a much wider audience much faster.

Mongolia’s younger musicians have much greater access to music from around the world than previous generations did. How do international influences interact with local musical traditions in your own work and in the wider scene?

Orgil : Yes, that’s right. We also have many international musical influences, and we especially love listening to and studying different styles.

Most of our members have formal degrees in music composition and other music-related fields, which is probably one of our strengths. We also have a strong influence from academic and classical music.

However, we strive to master those techniques while remaining true to our core value, which is honouring and evolving our native heritage. That shared purpose is why I believe our sound is continually growing and refining its distinct identity.

To us, Mongolian music feels peaceful, open and expansive, whereas Western music often feels sharper, highly kinetic and harmonically complex.

Because traditional Mongolian music is pentatonic, it blends seamlessly with genres such as blues and rock. Meanwhile, fusing it with jazz, Latin and other contemporary styles produces truly distinctive, unconventional textures.

Moving forward, we will keep striving to spread our unique cultural heritage while making music that genuinely resonates with us and brings us joy.

Has the growth of international interest in Mongolian music changed the way musicians in Mongolia think about presenting themselves abroad? Is there a tension between what foreign audiences expect from Mongolia and what younger Mongolian artists actually want to create?

Tsetsen: Yes, I believe it has.

When our culture and emotions are expressed through music, I believe they carry a rich complexity of emotions as vast as the steppes. We are deeply grateful to all the artists who are sharing this sensibility with international audiences and reshaping the way people hear Mongolian music.

What artists create and envision does not always align with audience expectations – sometimes it matches, and sometimes it diverges. It has always been like that. This is probably because every work emerges from a different perspective and carries its own unique story.

For us, creating music that we want to create and want to listen to also happens to align with what we aim to do: preserve our cultural heritage by infusing and blending it with our new contemporary senses and emotions.

Which other contemporary or independent Mongolian artists would you recommend to someone who wants to understand what is happening musically in Ulaanbaatar today?

Mongolian artists are definitely growing, evolving and diversifying alongside global musical trends.

Here are a few artists we highly recommend checking out:

• Bodikhuu
• Khusugtun
• B.L.M.D
• Magnolian
• Enji
• Even Tide
• Celine Dessberg

Finally, what is next for Dotor Khuree?

Chukana: We are really excited and looking forward to the release of our very first vinyl record for our debut LP Zarimdaa Zuils, featuring specially remastered audio.

We are also yet to organise our first solo concert.

Fuelled by this milestone, we are looking outward – driven by a passion to step onto international festival stages and bring our music to global audiences.

Dotor Khuree’s music is available on Bandcamp and other streaming platforms. The band can also be followed through its official Linktree.

By Mathieu Lemoine, Editor-in-Chief for Novastan English.

The post Dotor Khuree: “We want to make Mongolian music with contemporary instruments” appeared first on Novastan English.

Kazakhstan has begun building a major data centre cluster in the industrial city of Ekibastuz. Its first phase will require around 50 MW of power, but the government’s longer-term ambition is to expand the site to as much as 1 GW. As the country seeks to position itself as a regional hub for artificial intelligence and computing, questions remain over whether its electricity and water infrastructure can keep pace

In early 2026, Kazakhstan launched construction of its Data Center Valley project in Ekibastuz, in the northern Pavlodar region, following instructions from President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev.

The first facility in the planned cluster is expected to have an energy capacity of around 50 MW. Depending on investor demand, however, the campus could eventually expand to as much as 1 GW and occupy up to 1,300 hectares.

Ekibastuz was not chosen by accident. The city is one of Kazakhstan’s main energy centres and is home to the Ekibastuz GRES-1 and GRES-2 coal-fired power stations.

Yet the scale of the project raises questions over whether Kazakhstan can generate enough electricity for such a large new consumer, how the data centres will be supplied with water, and what environmental pressures the development could create.

What is Kazakhstan planning to build?

According to the Pavlodar regional administration, the precise distribution of land between individual data centres, energy facilities and other infrastructure will be determined as project documentation is developed.

The first stage includes data centre facilities, energy and engineering infrastructure, administrative buildings and AI computing infrastructure. Work is currently under way on site preparation, foundations, administrative facilities, checkpoints and the necessary engineering infrastructure.

The authorities say the initial stage will require around 50 MW, with capacity subsequently increasing in phases. Additional land has been reserved to allow the campus to expand if demand from investors and technology companies materialises.

Kazakhtelecom, one of the operators involved in the Data Center Valley project, told Novastan that the project envisages a hybrid cooling system combining precision air conditioning with closed liquid-cooling circuits using non-freezing liquid solutions.

Construction has already begun, but public hearings with local residents have not yet taken place.

The Pavlodar regional administration said hearings would be held after the necessary project documentation had been completed and the procedures required for environmental assessment had been carried out.

The biggest question: electricity

Connecting a new consumer with an eventual capacity of 1 GW would be unrealistic under Kazakhstan’s current energy conditions if such capacity were required all at once, according to Yerkebulan Kozhmambet, a member of the Public Council on Fuel and Energy Issues under Kazakhstan’s Ministry of Energy.

“If we are being honest, today this looks unrealistic, particularly given that the average age of our generating capacity is more than 65 years,” Kozhmambet said.

A phased project would be possible, he added, provided new generation and grid infrastructure were developed at the same time.

The first launch complex is expected to require 50 MW and is scheduled to enter operation in June 2027, while 1 GW represents a longer-term target rather than capacity the power system is expected to provide immediately.

The scale is nevertheless considerable.

According to Kozhmambet, a continuous 1 GW load would consume around 8.76 billion kWh of electricity annually. Kazakhstan’s total annual electricity consumption is approximately 110-115 billion kWh, meaning the completed Data Center Valley could theoretically account for around 7-8 percent of current national consumption.

“No region today has a free reserve of this scale,” he said.

The project also comes as Kazakhstan’s electricity system has faced shortages and imports, particularly from Russia during peak periods.

Kozhmambet warned that if the full 1 GW capacity were introduced before Kazakhstan achieves a sustainable electricity surplus, the new data centres could absorb that additional generation and push the system back into deficit.

Energy expert Asset Nauryzbayev takes a less pessimistic view.

He argues that 1 GW would not necessarily pose a major problem for Ekibastuz if the development of the data centres is synchronised with new generating capacity.

“If I understand the government’s intention correctly, it is based on the Soviet project to build four 4 GW power stations in Ekibastuz,” Nauryzbayev said. “In today’s conditions, the units would be 660 MW rather than 500 MW. An eight-unit station would therefore generate 5.8 GW. In those circumstances, 1 GW of consumption is absolutely not a large amount.”

He also pointed to planned new gas generation in southern Kazakhstan, which he expects to reduce the country’s electricity deficit.

But there is an environmental price.

“This will undoubtedly create an enormous carbon footprint,” Nauryzbayev said, although he believes the price of carbon offsets is unlikely to fundamentally affect the economics of the project.

Read more on Novastan: Carbon neutral by 2060? Kazakhstan’s green pledge faces a reality check

There is another potential risk if data centres are completed before the generation intended to supply them.

“Data centres will undoubtedly be able to pay more than ordinary consumers,” he said. “That could strongly affect the market if there is no direct link to newly built power stations. Data centres built quickly will take electricity away from ordinary consumers.”

Kazakhstan’s Ministry of Energy says the government plans to add more than 26.3 GW of generating capacity by 2035 through modernisation, new conventional generation, renewable energy projects and nuclear power.

Of this, 13.3 GW is planned through 2029.

The ministry expects the country to be able to cover domestic electricity demand from 2027 onwards and subsequently develop a surplus sufficient to accommodate energy-intensive AI infrastructure and large data centres.

Whether those projects are delivered on schedule will therefore be crucial to Data Center Valley’s longer-term expansion.

Could water become the bigger constraint?

Electricity may not be the only – or even the most difficult – resource question facing the project.

Kazakhstan’s Ministry of Water Resources and Irrigation told Novastan that it has not yet received an application to establish a water-use limit for Data Center Valley. No specific limit has therefore been set.

The ministry said that the appropriate volume would be assessed once an application and supporting documents were submitted.

Citing information from the Ministry of Artificial Intelligence and Digital Development, it also said planned AI data centres in Kazakhstan would use immersion cooling with specialised liquids, which should not require large volumes of water or restrict supplies to existing users.

This description differs from Kazakhtelecom’s statement that Data Center Valley will use a hybrid system combining precision air conditioning and closed liquid-cooling circuits.

The exact volume of water that the Ekibastuz facilities will require – and how liquids used during maintenance will be handled – has not yet been specified in the information provided to Novastan.

For environmentalists, this lack of detail is significant.

Svetlana Mogilyuk, chair of the ECOM public association, the Civil Alliance of Pavlodar Region and coordinator of the Aarhus Centre in Pavlodar, considers water consumption one of the project’s main environmental risks.

“The Ekibastuz area has significant limitations in terms of natural water resources,” she said.

These constraints have historically been addressed through the Satpayev Canal, which draws water from the Irtysh River.

“But the canal also has limited capacity, and the Irtysh, from which the water is taken, is not unlimited either,” Mogilyuk said. “That is precisely why water is one of the main issues that concerns us as environmentalists when assessing the planned data centre project.”

Nauryzbayev similarly believes the project’s weakest point may lie outside the electricity sector.

“The main risk of the project is not electricity,” he said. “The weakest point is the Irtysh-Karaganda Canal.”

The canal was originally designed in part to support large-scale industrial and power development around Ekibastuz, he explained, but it was not designed for the subsequent growth of Astana.

Read more on Novastan: Kazakhstan: Residents suffer from lack of water

“Power stations and Astana will now compete for water,” he said, adding that the situation could be exacerbated by an expected reduction in water entering the Irtysh from China.

One possible solution would be to use dry cooling towers, Nauryzbayev said, although this would increase costs.

Vadim Ni, founder of the Save the Caspian Sea civic movement and director of a social and environmental foundation, said any meaningful assessment would require clear information about water consumption, water sources and the cooling technology being used.

“The main environmental and social costs associated with data centre projects are their large consumption of electricity and water,” he said.

While electricity consumption can be significant at national level, he added, water use creates a particularly important local impact.

“For local populations, the sensitive issue is first and foremost increased competition for clean drinking water, which is already scarce in many regions of Kazakhstan.”

Environmental assessment is still pending

Kazakhstan’s Ministry of Ecology told Novastan that it had not yet received project materials for an environmental impact assessment of the Ekibastuz data centre development.

An environmental assessment would need to consider the project’s location, technical characteristics, technology, timetable, resource requirements, emissions, waste and potential direct and indirect environmental effects.

Vadim Ni argues that Kazakhstan’s existing environmental assessment framework is not yet well adapted to large data centre projects.

Data centres are not currently explicitly included among the categories of projects automatically requiring an environmental impact assessment or screening under the relevant sections of Kazakhstan’s Environmental Code, he said.

He believes Kazakhstan should develop mechanisms allowing the environmental and social effects of individual data centres to be assessed, while strategic environmental assessments could examine the cumulative impact of data-centre development across a region or the country.

At regional level, preliminary figures may eventually emerge through the IKI Nexus project supported by the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe, he added.

Meanwhile, public hearings on Data Center Valley have yet to take place.

Mogilyuk said environmental groups hoped the authorities would soon begin a genuine dialogue with local residents.

“So far, as often happens, the authorities have not entered into dialogue with the public and have simply communicated the idea of implementing the project through the media,” she said. “There have been no hearings yet, but we hope they will take place in the near future.”

For Ni, the quality of public consultation depends not simply on holding a meeting but on whether affected communities receive information early enough, whether documentation is accessible, and whether comments can genuinely influence the final project.

“The most important thing is that the people who are genuinely concerned about the project’s risks should participate in the discussions,” he said.

Consultation loses much of its purpose, he argued, if participants are selected primarily because they are already inclined to support the development.

Why does Kazakhstan want data centres?

Despite the questions surrounding resources and environmental impact, there are strong economic and technological arguments behind Kazakhstan’s data-centre ambitions.

IT analyst and large language model researcher Timur Bektur describes data centres as the physical foundation of the digital economy.

Cloud services, government information systems, banking services and AI models all depend on computing infrastructure, while Kazakhstan also has legal requirements governing the domestic storage of its citizens’ data.

“If you want to create your own AI product and need a GPU server to run an LLM model, you need a data centre and a server,” Bektur said.

Global demand for computing power is rising rapidly, and Kazakhstan could potentially supply not only its domestic market but neighbouring Central Asian countries as well.

The development of a major computing cluster could also attract cloud services, AI infrastructure, telecommunications and cybersecurity companies, as well as engineers, developers and specialised service providers.

For Kazakhstan, Bektur argues, this creates the possibility of selling something beyond its traditional commodities and energy exports: computing power.

Read more on Novastan: In Kazakhstan, the futuristic city of “Alatau” reaches a new milestone with special status

But he also remembers Ekibastuz’s own recent infrastructure problems.

The city suffered a major heating crisis in 2022, leaving residents without adequate heating during extremely cold weather.

“People were literally freezing,” Bektur said. “So the question has to be asked: who guarantees that something like this will not happen again?”

He remains optimistic about Data Center Valley but argues that the economics of the project must be demonstrated, particularly if the state is expected to carry a significant share of infrastructure costs.

“It is important to me that this project does not become an additional burden placed on the state or the population,” he said. “If it is economically justified, backed by demand and can bring real benefits to the country, then I am fully in favour. And I very much hope it creates no problems for the residents of Ekibastuz.”

Who benefits – and who bears the costs?

For Yevgeny Khabarov, director of the TAUAN public foundation in Pavlodar, Data Center Valley should ultimately be judged not simply by the amount of investment it attracts, but by what Ekibastuz itself gains from hosting it.

“I am interested not only in the question of how many billions of dollars will be invested,” he said.

The more important questions, he argues, concern how many resources the project will consume, who will pay for the necessary infrastructure, what tax and social benefits will remain in Ekibastuz, and what obligations investors will assume towards the local area.

“Investment in itself does not automatically constitute a public good,” Khabarov said.

“If most of the economic benefit remains with companies and investors, while the environmental burden and the use of water, land, electricity and infrastructure remain with the territory, then a perfectly legitimate question arises: are we privatising the benefits while socialising the costs?”

From a human-rights perspective, he added, development should ultimately improve people’s lives rather than simply increase asset values and investment volumes.

For Kazakhstan, Data Center Valley therefore represents more than an infrastructure project. It is a test of whether the country can convert its abundant energy resources and strategic location into a new digital industry – without shifting the costs of that ambition onto the people and environment of Ekibastuz.

By Daniyar Sadvakasov.

The post Kazakhstan’s AI Ambitions Face an Energy and Water Test in Ekibastuz appeared first on Novastan English.

Disability-rights expert Janina Arsenjeva discusses how activism is changing across Central Asia, why progress cannot be measured by legislation alone, and what governments, international organisations and the EU still get wrong about inclusion.

Disability rights have gained greater prominence across Central Asia over the past fifteen years. Governments have adopted new legislation and policies, disability-rights organisations have become more visible, and the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) has provided activists with a common framework for pushing for change. Yet progress across the region remains highly uneven – and laws on paper do not necessarily translate into greater autonomy, accessibility or inclusion in everyday life.

For Janina Arsenjeva, who has worked with disability-rights actors across all five Central Asian countries for many years, some of the most significant changes are taking place beyond legislation. A new generation of activists increasingly approaches disability as a question of equality and rights rather than charity, while grassroots organisations led by persons with disabilities themselves are becoming more diverse and assertive. At the same time, people with intellectual and psychosocial disabilities, those living in rural areas and other groups remain particularly underrepresented.

In an interview with Novastan English Editor-in-Chief Mathieu Lemoine, Arsenjeva discusses why there is no single Central Asian trajectory on disability rights, what meaningful participation should look like, and why international organisations need to rethink the way they work with local disability organisations. She also examines how the European Union can prevent its growing investments in Central Asia from creating new barriers, and argues that greater visibility of problems should not necessarily be interpreted as evidence of failure. Sometimes, she says, it can be the first sign that genuine reform has begun.

Novastan: You have worked with disability-rights actors across all five Central Asian countries over many years. Looking back, what has genuinely changed?

Janina Arsenjeva: One of the biggest changes for me is the disability movement itself. There are more grassroots organisations genuinely led by persons with disabilities, including younger people and women. There are also more organisations representing groups that previously had very little voice. And I see a new generation of activists who really understand disability as an issue of equality and rights, rather than charity or “curing” people. They may not always know or use the international human-rights vocabulary, but the values are there. That feels very different from fifteen years ago.

Where is the biggest gap today between what exists on paper and what a person with a disability actually experiences in everyday life? What tells you that reform is working?

I don’t think legislation is the alpha and omega of reform. You can do a lot even with imperfect laws. You can change attitudes, challenge prejudice and make persons with disabilities more visible in public life. Interestingly, one sign of progress is when we start hearing more about problems. It may look as if things are getting worse, but often it simply means somebody has finally started monitoring and talking openly about what is happening. Ultimately, though, the test is very practical. Can someone leave their home? Get support in education or employment? Find the services they need in their community? Uzbekistan, for example, has spent the last few years developing its social workforce and community-based support. That may be less glamorous than passing a big new law, but this is where reform starts changing people’s lives.

Read more on Novastan: When reform reaches everyday life: Lessons from Uzbekistan and Mongolia

How misleading is it to talk about Central Asia as though the five countries were moving along the same trajectory?

Very misleading. These are five different countries, with different politics, priorities, capacities and disability movements. Kyrgyzstan, for example, has done interesting practical work on accessibility, accessible communication and culture, and disability-inclusive emergency preparedness. In Kazakhstan, activists have done excellent work using the courts to restore the legal capacity of persons with disabilities, and there is also a growing social entrepreneurship movement. Organisations of women with disabilities are particularly strong in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. And Tajikistan has only just ratified the CRPD. So yes, there is a shared history and there are common challenges. But there is definitely no single Central Asian trajectory.

How can we tell whether participation of persons with disabilities has actually been meaningful rather than symbolic?

By now, simply saying “we consulted persons with disabilities” isn’t enough. The first question is: who did you consult? One established organisation cannot represent everybody. You need women, younger people and people with different disabilities around the table. And organisations need to be strong and independent enough to say things the government may not want to hear. Their expertise also has value, and we should stop expecting them to provide it for free. The process matters too. Was it accessible? Did people get enough information and enough time? And was this a one-off meeting, or is there a real mechanism for participation? I do see progress. Activists in several countries tell me that government doors are more open than they used to be, and governments increasingly understand that they actually need persons with disabilities if they want reforms to work.

How much has the shift from a medicalised understanding of disability towards a rights-based model actually happened?

It is uneven, but I think the shift is real. Uzbekistan is an interesting example. The creation of the National Agency for Social Protection has helped move the discussion away from a very paternalistic and medicalised approach and towards support, inclusion and living in the community. I also see the change among activists themselves. More and more people are talking about equality, autonomy and rights rather than charity. Of course, there is frustration that change is too slow, and I understand that. These are huge systems and they don’t transform overnight. But the direction matters, and so does continuing to push so that this direction is not lost.

Read more on Novastan: “Disability is a Mirror for the Development of Societies” – A Conversation with Dilmurad Yusupov

What do international organisations still get wrong in promoting disability inclusion in Central Asia?

The way international funding reaches grassroots organisations! Some of the people who know their communities best would never get through a fifty-page funding application in English with all the technical language and complicated budgets. Yet they may know exactly what women with disabilities in their community need, or what is happening to families in a remote village. They may also understand how to navigate a difficult political environment much better than an outsider does. Of course, public money needs accountability. But surely we can design funding processes that don’t exclude the very people whose expertise we need. I would also like to see much fairer partnerships between big international organisations and local groups, where local organisations are not simply there to implement somebody else’s project.

What would it mean in practical terms to make the EU’s growing investment in Central Asia disability-inclusive from the outset?

The basic principle is very simple: EU money should not be used to build new barriers. The EU already has rules and standards around accessibility, procurement, human rights and responsible business, although applying them consistently to international cooperation and investment is more complicated. But accessibility has to be considered from the beginning. If you build a railway station, public building or digital platform that people with disabilities cannot use, fixing it afterwards will be much harder and more expensive. You also need monitoring and real consequences when accessibility requirements are ignored. We haven’t solved all of this inside the EU either.

Which people are still least visible in disability policy in Central Asia? Are there issues governments and international organisations remain reluctant to confront?

People with intellectual and psychosocial disabilities are still particularly invisible, including within the disability movement itself. People living in rural and remote areas are also much less likely to be heard. And then there are issues that are simply much harder to talk about. Disability can look like a relatively easy development issue if we talk about wheelchairs, social benefits or accessibility. But then you get to legal capacity, political rights, abuse and torture in institutions, or punitive psychiatry. Those are much more difficult conversations. Local activists should guide how these issues are raised, but we also shouldn’t expect them to carry all the risk. Sometimes international organisations can say things that local activists simply cannot safely say themselves. The important thing is to do that with them, not on their behalf or without understanding the consequences.

Is a genuinely regional disability-rights movement emerging in Central Asia?

Not yet, in my view. Organisations across the region know one another and there are good examples of cooperation, particularly among organisations of women with disabilities in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. But I don’t yet see a strong, regular regional movement built around common priorities. Central Asia also falls between different international regions. Sometimes it is grouped with Europe, sometimes with Asia, so disability organisations don’t necessarily have an obvious regional home. I do think a stronger Central Asian network could be very valuable. These countries share borders, experiences and many challenges. But I would want it to be built around where the region wants to go next, rather than simply around the fact that all five countries share a Soviet past.

What makes you optimistic about disability rights in Central Asia today, and what change would you most like to see over the next decade?

What makes me optimistic is the people. I have just come back from Uzbekistan, where I met activists and persons with disabilities who are building support in their communities and pushing for alternatives to institutions. They are incredibly persistent and creative. Over the next decade, I would really like to see a more diverse disability movement, with much stronger voices from younger people and from groups that are still underrepresented: women and girls, Deaf people, persons with intellectual disabilities and others. I would also like to see better data, stronger monitoring and human-rights institutions that really play their role. And perhaps most importantly, I want us to become much more comfortable talking honestly about what isn’t working. Finding a problem doesn’t mean reform has failed. Sometimes it is the first sign that real reform has begun.

By Mathieu Lemoine, Editor-in-Chief for Novastan English.

The post Janina Arsenjeva: “Finding a problem doesn’t mean reform has failed” appeared first on Novastan English.

In the very center of Almaty, a short walk from two epicenters of Kazakhstan’s theatrical scene, the Abay Kazakh State Opera and Ballet Theater and the Mikhail Lermontov State Russian Academic Theater, stands the State Academic Uyghur Theater of Musical Comedy, the first and only professional Uyghur theater in the world.

Inside the theater, a modest café named Ghérip-Senem serves tea and snacks to audiences between performances. Its name recalls one of the institution’s most iconic productions: the Uyghur opera adaptation of Ghérip-Senem, which has been part of the theater’s repertoire since the Stalinist period and is still performed regularly today.

Ghérip-Senem is not only a theatrical classic and a musical romance but also a transregional poetic reference shared across Central Eurasia. The heart-wrenching love story at its center belongs to a widespread Persianate, Islamicate, and Turkic dastan (tale) tradition whose vernacular variants had circulated across the Caucasus and Central Asia long before its modern Uyghur adaptations first appeared on stage.

The epic cycle to which Ghérip-Senem belongs developed through the interaction of oral performance, manuscript transmission, printed editions, and later theatrical, operatic, and cinematic adaptations. Across its various vernacular forms, the story follows the structure of a Persianate romance: two lovers are bound by destiny or promise, separated by social rank, parental or aristocratic opposition, rival suitors, exile, false accusations, and extended periods of separation (hijran/juda), before fidelity is vindicated through return and reunion. Its persistence across various linguistic and literary traditions points to a shared poetic repository in which oral narrations, lyrical verses, moral testing, and the symbolism of Persianate love poetry could be repeatedly vernacularized without compromising the recognizable narrative structure or figurative repertoire.

Notable variants and their Soviet revivals

Some of the best-known variants of this epic cycle developed across the Caucasus – Central Asia divide, especially among Turkmen and Azerbaijani communities.

The Turkmen variant, Şasenem-Garyp, represents one of the most prominent vernacular forms of the story. Centered on the same cast of lovers, rulers, viziers, and rivals, the tale preserves the familiar structure of prenatal promise, broken covenant, separation, exile, imposed marriage, and eventual reunion. Its continued prominence in Turkmen literary and theatrical life also prepared the ground for later operatic and cinematic adaptations.

The Turkmen branch received one of its major Soviet rebirths in the 1963 film Şasenem-Garyp (Shakhsenem i Garib), based on literary adaptations of the dastan published in the 1940s. The film drew on the dastan’s natural affinity with musical melodrama: prose narration supplies the sequence of events, while singing, accompanied by the dutar (a traditional two-stringed instrument), gives voice to longing, suffering, and reunion. The film adaptation also translated the tale’s lyrical inheritance into visual form through costume, bazaar scenes, decorative settings, and the rose-and-nightingale (gül we bilbil) imagery, a recurrent trope in the poetry of the early modern Turkmen poet Magtymguly Pyragy.

The Azeri variant, Ashyg-Garib (Aşıq-Qərib), developed around the figure of the wandering ashyg (minstrel), whose love, exile, and return are inseparable from singing. In this version, the protagonist’s identity is shaped by the saz: lyrical poetry becomes the medium through which he declares longing, gains recognition, and demonstrates his fidelity. The tale retains the familiar narrative pattern but endows it with a distinctly Azeri musicality through the figure of Garib as a troubadour-lover. Its recurrent geographic references also place the story in a South Caucasian setting, with Tabriz and Tiflis forming the principal loci of origin, dream, encounter, and desire.

The same Azeri branch entered Russian and Soviet artistic circulation through Mikhail Lermontov’s literary retelling, Ashik Kerib, and later through Sergey Parajanov’s 1988 film under the same title. Lermontov compressed the dastan into a novella, while Parajanov’s film, based on Lermontov’s retelling, presented the story in a richly stylized Caucasian setting, combining ashyg/ashugh music, Azeri lyrics, elaborate ornament, pomegranate imagery, and ritualized gestures.

Ghérip-Senem in Uyghur adaptations

By the early twentieth century, the same epic cycle had become widespread among Uyghurs, particularly in the Ili Valley, where the Taranchis, a subgroup of Uyghurs, had sustained intensive cultural contact with Kazakhs, Uzbeks, and Tatars for centuries. The love story entered modern Uyghur literary and theatrical form in the 1930s. The renowned Uyghur writer Ziya Semed (Samadi), himself a native of the Ili Valley, produced an operatic adaptation of Ghérip-Senem in 1937. Another adaptation by Zunun Qadiri, also completed in 1937, later formed the basis for the 1981 film Ghérip-Senem, produced by the Ürümchi-based Tien-Shan Film Studio (Tengritagh kino studiisi), which would become a modern Uyghur cultural icon.

The 1981 film opens with recollections of two parallel hunting expeditions by Shah Abbas and his vizier Hesen, during which they each encounter a pregnant gazelle and spare it after recalling that their wives are also expecting children concurrently. Abbas then pledges that, if one household has a son and the other a daughter, the two children will be joined in marriage. Abbas’s wife gives birth to Senem, while Hesen’s wife gives birth to Ghérip. Years later, the two study together in a madrasa, where companionship eventually transforms into love. Their promised union is disrupted by Shawaz, who plots the assassination of Hesen, subsequently succeeds him as vizier, and seeks to make his son, Abdulla, heir to the throne by marrying him to Senem. Through conspiracy and false accusations, Shawaz turns Abbas against Ghérip, who is condemned as a rebel and expelled alongside his family. In exile, Ghérip’s fidelity moves Dilarem, a female serder (ruler), whose mountain community helps him return. Shawaz and Abdulla’s conspiracy is eventually exposed, Abbas recognizes the injustice committed against Hesen’s family, and the lovers are reunited in matrimony after lengthy separation.

Persianate poetic tropes on the silver screen

The 1981 film draws extensively upon the repertoire of Persianate poetic symbolism and reproduces those literary tropes through visual imagery, songs, and dialogue.

The names of the main characters represent some of the clearest uses of poetic symbolism. The name Ghérip recalls the Perso-Arabic word gharib, meaning a stranger, exile, or wanderer. Senem derives from Persian sanam, meaning an idealized image or beloved, a word whose secular poetic use often intersects with Sufi-inflected language of beauty, devotion, and forbidden adoration. The ruler’s designation as Shah Abbas likewise places the court within Persianate political traditions. These names give the story an implied register of estrangement and devotion from the outset.

The film’s most explicit literary frame is Perhat-Shérin (Farhad and Shirin), a love story popularized by Nizami Ganjavi in Persian and later elaborated by Alisher Navoiy in Chaghatay. Senem’s reading of the story in Charbagh (“quadripartite garden”) leads to a scene she fantasizes, where Perhat and Shérin appear in the likeness of Ghérip and Senem. In Senem’s vision, Perhat splits the mountain with his pickaxe, which turns the classic metaphor of impossible labor into a visual prefiguration of Ghérip’s own ordeal. When the lovers later invoke Perhat-Shérin and Leyli-Mejnun in their vows, they place their bond within a poetic lineage of trials and tribulations, separation, longing, and self-consuming devotion, motifs that also acquired strong Sufi resonance in other Persianate texts.

The triangular structure of the romance recalls the rivalry embedded in the literary trope of Khosrow, Shirin, and Farhad, where the beloved becomes the object of competing claims between devoted labor and the desire of the powerful. In the film, Abdulla’s desire for Senem is coercive and jealous rather than devotional or genuine, reinforced by his father Shawaz’s political ambitions and by Abdulla’s own penchant for weapons and violence. Against Ghérip’s patience, exile, and fidelity, Abdulla represents a rival love emptied of adab (etiquette, decency, and refinement) and transformed into an instrument of power struggles.

The pregnant gazelle at the beginning of the film symbolizes vulnerability, maternity, and compassion. As Shah Abbas and Hesen spare the animal while recalling their own pregnant wives, the scene transforms a hunting expedition into a moral test of compassion. In Persianate love stories, especially in Nizami’s Sufi-inflected narrative arc of Leyla and Majnun, wild animals often congregate near the suffering lover as creatures, protected by his mercy, as his love and compassion extend even to animals.

The symbolism of violence takes a darker turn in the film. The arrow – the weapon initially restrained before the pregnant gazelle – returns in corrupted form when Hesen is murdered by a poisoned arrow. Meanwhile, explicit accusations of slander and calumny throughout the film are expressed through the word zeher (“poison”). Persianate ethical literature, from Sa‘di’s Gulistan to later Turkic didactic verses in The Book of Dede Korkut, often treats slander as a moral injury. The film connects emotional damage to literal poison.

The royal garden, Charbagh, functions as the film’s central site of love and confinement. The term itself evokes the quadripartite garden associated with Persianate ideas of nourishment and paradise, while the scene of Senem reading Perhat-Shérin by an aywan (veranda) situates poetry and imagination in a setting for genuine love. As Abbas later turns the same space into a place of confinement for Senem, the garden’s meaning changes from emotional awakening to the enclosure of the beloved under patriarchal and autocratic authority.

The recurrent pair-of-roses imagery functions as the film’s most intimate visual emblem. Senem sews Ghérip a handkerchief bearing her name and two roses. Later, at the wedding festivities arranged for her and Abdulla, she recognizes Ghérip’s nearby presence through a bouquet with two roses at its center, sent to her by an intermediary. The rose, already central to Persianate poetry, becomes both an image of beauty and a code of recognition in the film. Furthermore, the handkerchief further condenses innocence and sorrow. Its white color and silky fabric evoke purity and tenderness, while its very function as an object for wiping tears turns it into a keepsake of separation.

The madrasa scenes place Ghérip and Senem’s love within the discipline of adab. The mullah, Jamalidin, whose name means “beauty of faith,” is the source of knowledge and etiquette. The subject taught by Jamalidin, whom his pupils address reverently as ustaz (“master”), appears to be edebiyet (“literature” – the word itself a derivative of adab). Abbas’s removal of Senem from the madrasa, followed by Jamalidin’s imprisonment, therefore marks the rupture of the ethical and literary order that first allowed their love to flourish. Even Shah Abbas, despite his despotic tendencies, defers to Jamalidin’s moral authority. Jamalidin’s eventual release from imprisonment also marks the return of reason and justice.

Some of the songs in the film also draw upon the Persianate vocabulary of longing. As Ghérip waits for Senem in Charbagh, his drawn-out cry of “yarim kelmidi” (“my beloved has not come”) turns the Persianate term yar (“beloved”) into an expression of anxiety and separation. Senem’s later declaration that her heart burns for Ghérip echoes a classical lyrical motif found in Rumi’s ghazals and Nadira’s love poems, where the burning heart, often expressed through the imagery of a kebab, highlights suffering, fidelity, and spiritual cleansing. In Sufi-inflected poetry, burning may also suggest purification through longing.

The repeated appearance of a zulfiqar (a bifurcated sword) in the film marks the continuity between Hesen’s moral authority and Ghérip’s eventual vindication. In Islamic traditions, the zulfiqar is associated with the Prophet Muhammad’s cousin and son-in-law, Ali, and evokes valor, justice, and martial authority. Because the sword has once belonged to Hesen and is later passed reverently to Ghérip before his return, it functions as a restored inheritance: Ghérip receives the symbol of justice that has been interrupted by Hesen’s murder and Shawaz’s usurpation.

Shah Abbas’s authority over marriage, confinement, exile, and execution gives the story a coercive dimension. His order to execute Ghérip is interrupted by Eid al-Adha (Qurban Héyit), whose associations with sacrifice, mercy, and communal renewal place sacred traditions above despotic wrath.

The forty-day wedding festivities arranged for Senem and Abdulla draw on a symbolic duration widely used in Persianate literary traditions to mark trial and transformation. In the film, the number forty gives the false marriage the appearance of ritualistic completeness. The imposed forty-day celebration ends not with Senem’s surrender but with Ghérip’s return and the restoration of the original covenant.

Direct and indirect allusions to paradise appear throughout the film and beyond. Senem’s reading of Perhat-Shérin leads to a fantasy of paradise, while Charbagh and the paired roses echo Persianate associations between gardens and paradisic beauty. In a 1980 painting based on the same story by the prominent Uyghur painter Ghazi Emet, the inclusion of two peacocks, a familiar emblem of splendor and paradise in Persianate visual culture, extends this imagery into courtly aesthetics, while its folded tail suggests the still-unrealized potential of earthly love.

The film’s Persianate poetic symbolism is presented through distinctly Uyghur cultural elements. Its dialogue and songs are based on highly poeticized Uyghur diction and syntax, while the film’s visual texture includes etles köynek (traditional silk dress), doppa (traditional skullcap), qapaq (a gourd turned into a water bottle), kerney (a long horn typically used in festivities), and chin ussuli (a traditional dance involving the balancing of numerous bowls on the dancer’s head). These elements give the love story a specifically Uyghur form and allow the broader Persianate poetic symbolism to be conveyed through Uyghur music, costume, and material culture.

Shérinjan: A Soviet musical afterlife

A revealing parallel appears in the 1986 Soviet Uyghur musical Séhirlik Alma (The Magical Apple), filmed in Bukhara and Khiva with songs performed by the Uyghur pop band Yashliq (“youth”) in honor of the band’s home city, Almaty, whose name means “where apples are from.” Although the sequence of love stories unfolds in a stylized pre-modern setting, one line of dialogue explicitly refers to the State Uyghur Dance Ensemble of the Kazakh SSR, an anachronism that marks the film as a playful Soviet Uyghur reworking of Persianate fairy-tale romance rather than a rigorous historical reenactment. Like the literary symbolism in Ghérip-Senem, the musical stages love through pop songs, lavish costumes, traditional and techno dances, garden imagery, and the symbolism of apples and roses.

A song in the musical, “Shérinjan,” offers the clearest example of this parallel poetic vocabulary. The song is a confession of love from a young man to his beloved. The beloved’s name evokes the poetic heroine, Shérin, while the affectionate suffix jan (a Persian-derived endearment that also means “soul” and “life”) draws on a Persianate language of intimacy in which the beloved is also the soul and life. Its lyrical images unfold through a familiar poetic sequence: apples thrown into the river drift without sinking, with the word for drifting, leylimeq, also evoking the poetic heroine, Leyli; the fire of love blazes without going out; gardens stir in the breeze; flowers summon the nightingale; and thirsty hearts cry yar-yar day and night. The singer’s refusal to enter the beloved’s garden or to pluck her pomegranate adds a note of restraint, turning desire into an ethical posture governed by adab. The song thereby reproduces many of the same symbolic associations that structure Ghérip-Senem: love moves through flowers, water, fire, garden, confession, and the disciplined longing of the faithful lover.

The only non-Uyghur song in the musical is the chorus of “Million alykh roz” (“A Million Scarlet Roses”), a classic by the late Soviet pop diva Alla Pugachëva, reinterpreted by a child before a young couple. Performed with a mixture of traditional Uyghur instrumentation and 1980s electronica arrangement, the song extends the Persianate symbolism of roses in a form familiar to a broader Soviet audience and inserts a recognizable Soviet pop refrain into a pre-modern romance setting without disrupting the musical’s fairy-tale fabric. The image of a million scarlet roses transforms the traditional pair-of-roses motif, as seen in Ghérip-Senem, into an extravagant public display of devotion.

The ubiquity of Persianate poetic symbolism in Ghérip-Senem reveals the depth of Uyghur cultural heritage and its rootedness in a cultural spectrum far broader than any single local or national tradition. Through its distinct Uyghur cultural forms, the film participates in a shared Persianate repertoire of romance, refinement, longing, and moral codes that has linked communities across Central Eurasia and beyond for centuries. The film’s significance, therefore, lies not only in its iconic status within modern Uyghur culture but also in the clarity with which it affirms Uyghur inheritance of a magnificent literary patrimony.

By Diego Benning Wang.

Diego Benning Wang is a historian of Eurasia and Eastern Europe. Having received a PhD in history from Princeton University, an MA in Russian studies from Columbia University, and a BA in Russian studies from New York University, he is currently a visiting scholar at Harvard University.

The post “Ghérip-Senem”: The visualization of Persianate poetic symbolism in Uyghur cinema appeared first on Novastan English.

Seoul has elevated its relationship with Central Asia to summit level and placed critical minerals, supply chains and industrial cooperation at the centre of the agenda. But four experts interviewed by Novastan argue that the real test will be whether South Korea can turn regional diplomacy into investment, local value creation and practical cross-border cooperation across five very different states

When the leaders of South Korea and the five Central Asian states met in Seoul on 16 September, the symbolism was difficult to miss. A relationship that had operated through the Korea-Central Asia Cooperation Forum since 2007 was elevated to heads-of-state level for the first time, while the Seoul Declaration set out a broader framework for cooperation in industry, infrastructure, technology, climate and people-to-people ties.

The economic agenda was equally prominent. South Korea and the Central Asian states established a C5+1 meeting of industry ministers, agreed to deepen cooperation on critical minerals and supply chains, and dkiscussed local processing, manufacturing, infrastructure and digital transformation. A parallel business summit produced 19 memoranda of understanding.

But the diplomatic upgrade does not necessarily mean that South Korea suddenly has a coherent regional strategy for Central Asia.

The five states differ markedly in economic structure, resources, labour markets and their existing relations with Seoul. Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan have by far the deepest Korean industrial and political ties, while Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan occupy very different places in the relationship.

The more important question is therefore not whether South Korea has become more interested in Central Asia. It plainly has. It is whether a regional diplomatic framework can add something meaningful to relationships that will remain, in practice, highly differentiated.

Four specialists interviewed by Novastan suggest that it can – but only if Seoul avoids treating Central Asia as either a single economic bloc or simply a new source of strategic raw materials.

A new emphasis, not a new relationship

South Korea’s growing focus on supply-chain resilience can easily be presented as a dramatic shift. Yet Matteo Fumagalli, Director of the Institute of Middle East, Central Asia and the Caucasus Studies at the University of St Andrews, sees considerably more continuity.

“There is indeed an additional emphasis on supply chain resilience,” he told Novastan, but this is being added to “pre-existing priorities” rather than replacing them.

The change reflects a series of shocks that have forced governments to think differently about economic vulnerability: Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, worsening trade tensions and instability in the relationship between the United States and China.

Alexandre Haym, an analyst of South Korean foreign policy, similarly places the current push in a longer trajectory. Seoul’s recent initiatives build on earlier efforts, including the New Northern Policy and the K-Silk Road strategy. In this reading, economic security has accelerated South Korea’s engagement with Central Asia rather than fundamentally reinventing it.

Critical minerals nevertheless give the relationship a new sense of urgency.

Central Asia possesses uranium, rare metals and other resources attractive to a Korean economy heavily dependent on imported inputs. Yet Fumagalli cautions against assuming that Seoul intends to replace its existing suppliers with Central Asian ones.

“I don’t think that Seoul’s objective is for Central Asia to become a key source of imports,” he said.

The key word is diversification.

South Korea is looking for additional suppliers and additional options, not necessarily a new dominant source of raw materials. And the distance between identifying a mineral deposit and incorporating it into a Korean industrial supply chain remains considerable.

Central Asian governments have only recently begun updating geological data that in some cases dated back to the Soviet period, Fumagalli notes. Exploration may identify promising reserves, but commercial development still requires finance, infrastructure, processing capacity, reliable energy and water, and customers willing to buy the resulting products.

That distinction matters because summit diplomacy can make a deposit strategically interesting without making it economically viable.

“Investment. Investment. Investment”

From the Central Asian perspective, the priorities are not identical to Seoul’s.

Asked what the region most wants from South Korea, Fumagalli’s answer was emphatic:

“Investment. Investment. Investment.”

For Central Asian governments, diversification is not simply about selling minerals to an additional foreign buyer. It is also about attracting capital, technology, training and industrial activity that remains in the region.

Aidar Kurmashev, Head of the Department of Asian Studies at the Kazakhstan Institute for Strategic Studies, argues that the success of a minerals partnership should therefore be assessed by the productive capabilities it creates.

“Resource exports can generate revenue,” he told Novastan. “The more demanding task is to use that activity to develop processing, engineering services and suppliers that can remain competitive over time.”

Technology transfer, in this sense, cannot simply mean importing Korean machinery. It requires local engineers able to operate and improve production processes, laboratories capable of maintaining quality standards, trained maintenance teams and domestic suppliers able to meet industrial specifications.

The objective need not be to manufacture the most sophisticated finished product domestically. In some cases, a refined metal, industrial component or intermediate material may represent a more realistic step up the value chain.

What matters is whether Korean investment leaves behind skills and commercially viable production.

That is also where the interests of Seoul and Central Asian governments can diverge.

South Korea wants resilient access to strategic inputs. Central Asian states increasingly want to avoid remaining exporters of unprocessed resources.

Professor Jieon Lee, Head of the Department of Central Asian Studies at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, argues that an engagement driven too narrowly by Korean supply-chain concerns could undermine one of Seoul’s principal advantages in the region: the relatively positive image it has accumulated through education, culture, technology and long-term cooperation.

A relationship perceived as extractive would put that goodwill at risk.

One region, five different relationships

The difficulty for Seoul is that there is no single Central Asian economic model to which it can apply a uniform Korean strategy.

Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan are the obvious anchors. Both have substantial populations, established industrial links with Korean companies, important mineral resources and large Koryo-saram communities.

Their relationship with Seoul is therefore qualitatively different from that of Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan or Turkmenistan.

Fumagalli notes that South Korea itself needs different things from different Central Asian states. Labour migration, for example, matters more in its relationships with Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan than with Turkmenistan. Training programmes or cultural cooperation may have greater relevance elsewhere.

Lee argues that the answer is not to force uniformity, but to combine differentiated bilateral relationships with cooperation on what she calls “regional public goods.”

These could include water management, climate cooperation, human-capital development, digital governance and different stages of the critical-minerals value chain.

Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan may remain Seoul’s main industrial partners. Cooperation with Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan might place greater emphasis on education, hydropower, labour mobility or development cooperation, while Turkmenistan presents a different set of opportunities in energy and logistics.

A regional strategy, in other words, does not require each country to receive the same Korean factory, investment package or sectoral priority.

Its value lies elsewhere.

Where regionalism can actually help

Kurmashev offers perhaps the clearest test of whether the new summit format matters.

“The summit can give political authority to work that already has an institutional base,” he said.

Simply creating another opportunity for leaders to meet would “change very little.”

The regional format becomes useful when it tackles problems that cannot be solved through a bilateral investment agreement alone.

A Korean company could build a factory in Kazakhstan, buy inputs from Uzbekistan and sell its products across several Central Asian markets. Yet even an excellent bilateral relationship cannot by itself resolve incompatible certification rules, unpredictable border procedures or transport arrangements involving several jurisdictions.

A delay at a border can undermine an investment whose financing and construction proceeded smoothly.

For Kurmashev, the summit’s significance will become clearer when it is possible to “trace a political decision to an observable change across a border.”

This also provides a more realistic way for the smaller Central Asian economies to participate in Korean-led production networks.

Regional cooperation need not mean reproducing an entire industrial chain in every country. A specialised supplier in Kyrgyzstan or Tajikistan could benefit from a larger network centred on production elsewhere if borders, certification and logistics allow it to participate.

This is less spectacular than announcing another billion-dollar investment package.

But it may ultimately matter more.

The Middle Corridor is not the whole answer

Transport is another area where political rhetoric can obscure commercial reality.

The Middle Corridor across the Caspian Sea and South Caucasus has gained enormous geopolitical visibility as governments search for routes that reduce dependence on Russia.

For South Korea, however, geography creates an additional complication.

Because North Korea blocks direct overland access from South Korea to the Eurasian continent, Korean cargo must first travel by sea before entering a continental route.

“The Middle Corridor is important to many countries,” Fumagalli said. But for Korea, simply getting goods onto the Eurasian landmass adds both time and cost. Seoul is therefore examining multiple possibilities rather than betting everything on a single route.

Kurmashev likewise cautions against treating connectivity as one uniform corridor problem.

Korean goods entering Kazakhstan may arrive through China. A Korean-invested Kazakh factory selling to Europe may have a much stronger interest in the Trans-Caspian route. The same factory selling to Uzbekistan primarily needs predictable transport within Central Asia.

“The Middle Corridor is important, but its relevance depends on the origin and destination of the cargo,” he said.

The underlying issue is therefore less glamorous: customs procedures, compatible digital systems, certification, transport reliability and clear responsibility when shipments are delayed.

Those are precisely the areas in which a regional political framework can potentially complement bilateral investment.

Korea’s soft advantage – and its limits

South Korea does have one advantage that is harder to measure than investment flows.

It is generally perceived differently from Russia, China or the major Western powers.

Fumagalli describes Seoul as retaining a relatively “non-threatening” profile in Central Asia, reinforced by the extraordinary reach of Korean popular culture.

Historical ties through Koryo-saram communities, Korean universities, consumer technology, development programmes and K-pop all contribute to a familiarity that conventional economic statistics do not capture.

Read more on Novastan: How Central Asia became home for the Koryo-Saram

Kurmashev nevertheless warns against turning that favourable image into an assumption of automatic trust.

Korea has no history of ruling Central Asian territory and shares no border with the region, but governments, companies and local communities may still perceive individual projects differently. A positive national image does not settle concerns about employment, water use, working conditions or the terms of a particular investment.

Lee points to another increasingly important dimension: the experience of Central Asians in South Korea itself.

Students, migrant workers and other Central Asian residents encounter questions of labour rights, integration, discrimination and visa insecurity. Those experiences also shape perceptions of Korea.

Economic diplomacy therefore does not take place separately from human relationships.

A country may enjoy strong cultural appeal while simultaneously damaging its reputation through the everyday experience of the people who study and work there.

The test comes after the summit

The first Korea-Central Asia summit has already succeeded in one respect: it has institutionalised a relationship that Seoul increasingly regards as strategically important.

The Republic of Korea government itself emphasised that cooperation should move beyond individual infrastructure projects toward local processing, manufacturing, industrial capacity and “mutually beneficial value chains.”

The harder question is whether that language produces projects.

Fumagalli would watch whether announced investments – particularly in areas such as renewable energy – actually move forward.

Kurmashev proposes an even more concrete measure: financing secured, factories operating, transport becoming more reliable, and local companies acquiring capabilities they can use beyond a single Korean partnership.

For Lee, the regional framework will also have to prove that it can address shared problems without pretending that Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan are interchangeable.

And Haym’s emphasis on continuity provides an important corrective to the language of diplomatic breakthroughs. South Korea has been building relationships in Central Asia for decades. The summit did not create them. It gave them a new institutional form.

That may be precisely why the most realistic Korean strategy will remain regional in form and bilateral in practice.

Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan are likely to continue attracting the deepest economic engagement. The other Central Asian states will participate through different sectors, at different scales and for different reasons.

That is not necessarily a failure of regionalism.

The real test is whether the new framework can make those unequal relationships work better together – allowing investment to cross borders, local companies to enter production networks, skills and technology to remain in the region, and Central Asian governments to gain meaningful new economic choices.

If it does, South Korea may carve out a distinctive role in one of the world’s increasingly crowded arenas of economic diplomacy.

If it does not, Seoul will have succeeded in creating another summit – without fundamentally changing what lies beneath it.

By Mathieu Lemoine, Editor-in-Chief of Novastan English.

The post South Korea’s Central Asia strategy is regional in form, bilateral in practice appeared first on Novastan English.

Former MP, minister, writer and political activist Oyungerel Tsedevdamba came of age during Mongolia’s peaceful democratic revolution. More than three decades later, she speaks to Novastan Editor-in-Chief Mathieu Lemoine about corruption, party financing, women in politics, younger voters, local democracy and why remembering the country’s communist past still matters.

When Mongolia’s democratic revolution unfolded in the winter of 1989-1990, Oyungerel Tsedevdamba was 24. The peaceful transition ended the one-party rule, opened the way to multiparty elections and political pluralism, and was followed by a new constitution in 1992.

For Tsedevdamba, however, the transformation was experienced less through constitutional language than through something more immediate: the sudden possibility of choice.

“The idea of having choices was so new,” she tells Novastan. Freedom to speak, travel, read and participate politically seemed almost unimaginable only a short time before. Thirty-six years later, she remains emphatically proud of what she calls Mongolia’s “homegrown democracy” – but far more critical of the political institutions that have developed within it.

Her concerns range from party financing and corruption to declining citizen participation in local government. At the same time, she sees reasons for optimism in younger voters, the increasing normality of women entering politics and a continuing public willingness to defend democratic freedoms.

“The idea of having choices was so new”

Novastan: You were 24 during Mongolia’s peaceful democratic revolution in 1990 and have described discovering the Universal Declaration of Human Rights at that time as formative. Looking back more than three decades later, what part of the democratic promise of 1990 do you think Mongolia has fulfilled most successfully, and where has it fallen furthest short?

Oyungerel Tsedevdamba: When I was 24, I was fascinated by the idea that we could have a free market, freedom of speech and freedom to travel. The multiparty system and elections were things we did not know much about, but I was still so excited simply to have more choices – including in politics.

The idea of having choices was so new. The possibility of being free to learn, read or watch whatever you wanted was fascinating. The 1990 democratic revolution fulfilled the promises of its time and gave us even more than we could have imagined possible.

I am very proud that we in Mongolia managed to build a homegrown democracy. Looking back 36 years later, I am still fascinated by the transformation we went through. But now we need to work on the future and free our political parties and government from corruption, which I see as the biggest enemy of democracy in our country.

Democracy between Russia and China

Mongolia’s democratic trajectory is unusual in its regional setting. Landlocked between Russia and China, it moved from Soviet-aligned one-party rule to a multiparty political system after the peaceful revolution of 1990. Its foreign policy has since sought relationships beyond its two immediate neighbours while maintaining close economic and political ties with both.

Read more on Novastan: “Mongolia cannot be understood through one lens”: Dr. Mendee Jargalsaikhan on democracy, China and Central Asia

Mongolia is often presented internationally as an exceptional democratic case between Russia and China. Does that description still feel accurate from inside the country, or does it obscure weaknesses in Mongolia’s democratic institutions and political culture?

I agree with that description. We made many decisions that our neighbours and other post-communist countries did not. Our path was bloodless and seemingly smooth, although underneath that were many everyday struggles that continue today.

Sometimes even Mongolia’s extreme cold tests whether people are prepared to demonstrate against government decisions. When young people do so at minus 30 degrees, I find that refreshing – and very Mongolian.

But when it comes to weaknesses in our democratic institutions and political culture, I believe the weakest institutions are the two major parties, the Mongolian People’s Party and the Democratic Party. Their financing systems are unsustainable and, in my view, systematically erode democracy and good governance.

The two parties have developed what I see as a dangerous competition for political wealth. That is one of the principal risks to the future of Mongolian democracy.

Leaving the Democratic Party after 29 years

You spent many years within the Democratic Party before founding the Civic Unity Party. What convinced you that Mongolia needed a new political party rather than reform of the existing opposition?

Leaving the Democratic Party after 29 years as a loyal member was the most painful political decision I have ever made. I cried as if I were divorcing someone I loved. But eventually I decided that enough was enough.

For years, I had openly criticised the financial system through which the party conducted its everyday activities and internal electoral processes. Many young people and women were unable to compete for nominations because of increasingly heavy party fees. In one parliamentary cycle, people seeking to participate in internal competition for a candidacy were expected to pay 100 million tugriks (around EUR 24,000).

When I concluded that my attempts to change this system had failed, I decided to leave the Democratic Party and establish the Civic Unity Party (CUP). Ideologically, CUP is close to the Democratic Party, but we are trying to build a different institutional culture.

Accessibility and affordability of politics for ordinary Mongolian citizens are central to that vision. Institutions do not have to be big and expensive. They should provide platforms through which citizens can exercise their constitutional rights. Young people, women, small-business owners and even pensioners should be able to participate without needing substantial personal wealth.

More women in parliament – but persistent barriers

The 2024 parliamentary election marked a major increase in women’s representation. Thirty-two women were elected to Mongolia’s expanded 126-seat parliament, bringing women’s representation to 25.4 percent. Twenty-four of them entered parliament through party lists operating under a gender “zipper” requirement.

Women performed much better through proportional party lists than in constituency contests. Does that show that quotas and electoral reform are working, or that deeper barriers to women winning political power remain?

Women’s participation in parliament has been increasing steadily since proportional representation was first introduced into parliamentary elections in 2012. But there is an interesting difference. In 2012, 45 percent of women MPs were elected from constituencies, including myself. In 2024, that figure was only 25 percent.

In my view, one reason for women’s lower success in constituency races in 2024 was the unusually large size of those constituencies. Electoral reform and quotas are generally working, but with reasonably sized constituencies there would be more room for women to achieve stronger representation.

You have been involved in women’s political participation for decades. What has changed most profoundly since the 1990s?

The biggest change I have witnessed over 35 years in politics is that politics has become a normal activity for women. Society has changed and become more accepting of women participating in political life.

Read more on Novastan: More Women in Central Asian Politics – But Where Is the Power?

But there are regions where resistance remains stronger. In parts of Mongolia’s eastern steppe, for example in Sükhbaatar province, masculine traditions associated with horse culture remain particularly prominent. Bayan-Ölgii also has a distinctive social and cultural context in which women can face different barriers to political participation.

The important thing is that the basic perception has changed. A woman entering politics is no longer regarded as something inherently unusual.

A younger political culture

You spoke positively in 2024 about seeing young people eager to vote and change the country. Is Mongolia’s younger generation developing a different political culture from the generation that led the democratic transition?

Yes. The younger generation is much more connected through the internet than the generation that led Mongolia through the democratic transition. They are demanding an end to corruption and the misuse of public resources – areas where they believe established parties have failed.

They also demand greater transparency, stronger ethical standards and a lower tax burden. What is particularly interesting is the way they express political views. They use comedy, social media, music and other creative forms of communication much more naturally than previous generations did.

“I was shocked”: discovering local democracy from the inside

Tsedevdamba is now an elected council member in Ulaanbaatar’s Khan-Uul District. The experience, she says, challenged assumptions she had developed during years in national politics.

Has working at the local level changed the way you think about democracy?

I was actually shocked by how detached many people have become from local government. Citizens who benefit directly from government programmes may have some interaction with it, but many others seem largely ignored.

The level of citizen participation in local democracy has decreased significantly compared with the period from 2012 to 2016. There are no longer the same opportunities for citizens to participate in local budget hearings or propose micro-projects through khoroo-level budgets.

Working at the local level has therefore given me a new political goal: restoring citizens’ power in local government. I believe Mongolia has experienced democratic backsliding at the local level during the past decade, and some of these changes have become so normalised that, in her view, local decision-makers barely question them anymore.

Tsedevdamba points to one case from Khan-Uul District as an example. In November 2024, she says district councillors voted to include the head judge of the district court in a local crime-prevention committee. She opposed the decision and subsequently complained to Mongolia’s Judicial General Council. According to her account, the council later instructed local representative bodies that judges should not participate in such committees, after which Khan-Uul’s council reversed its decision.

What toilets taught a former minister about politics

Some of Tsedevdamba’s most concrete lessons about politics have come not from parliament but from her work through Local Solutions and the “Let’s Change Our Toilets” campaign.

Your grassroots work focuses on very practical questions of sanitation and quality of life. What has it taught you about the gap between national policy and everyday reality?

The gap is huge. The more wealth the country generates, the further politicians can become from grassroots realities. If decision-makers better understood the basic realities of Mongolian lives and the natural environment, and invested more efficiently in improving living conditions, I believe the resources Mongolia already generates could do much more to reduce air and soil pollution and create a healthier environment.

Working to replace pit toilets for the past nine years has taught me how families actually make decisions, what they prioritise and what really matters to them. Learning from families, adapting to their needs and answering their questions made me realise how far removed I myself had been from those realities during much of my political career. I had been one of those politicians who was “off the ground.”

Read more on Novastan: Keeping the heat in: Mongolia’s overlooked answer to Ulaanbaatar’s air pollution

An average Mongolian household, by my estimate, lives on around $950 (approximately EUR 835) a month and has to stretch that income across housing, food, clothing for four seasons, winter heating, schooling and transport, often while dealing directly with an extremely harsh climate. Trying to change sanitation through market mechanisms rather than simply handing out free toilets was probably one of the best decisions I made because it forced us to understand what people were genuinely prepared and able to choose.

The progress has been slow – around 1,600 toilets changed over nine years – but that slowness has itself been a valuable lesson. I will not stop simply because the change is slow. Next summer, we plan to take the project further into the countryside, establish a camp on the steppe and add new showroom and sales locations in Ulaanbaatar.

Democracy and geopolitics

Mongolia’s democratic identity is often discussed geopolitically because of its position between Russia and China. How much does that geography constrain the country politically today?

Our domestic democratic process is relatively insulated from geopolitics, although new challenges are emerging, including bots and false information online.

Because of Mongolia’s unique geographic position, there has historically been broad political agreement that foreign policy should not become an arena for partisan competition. That consensus can constrain how openly political forces express different views on international issues, but it also helps prevent Mongolia’s internal political competition from being absorbed completely into wider geopolitical divides.

Read more on Novastan: Bolor Lkhaajav: “Mongolia does not need to choose between Russia and China”

Remembering what came before 1990

Tsedevdamba’s political work has long overlapped with another concern: historical memory. Her fiction explores the repression and social transformation of Mongolia’s communist period, partly through research into her own family history.

How important is historical memory to Mongolia’s democracy today? Do younger Mongolians sufficiently understand the repression and authoritarianism that preceded 1990?

One fear I had during the early years of democracy was that politicians from the former communist system would encourage nostalgia for the communist past among younger generations and make authoritarianism seem attractive again.

In 2005, government officials secretly burned copies of three volumes of research documenting the repression of the 1930s. For me, that was a wake-up call. Younger Mongolians had not experienced communism themselves. If our generation did not describe the full reality of that system, they could end up seeing only the brighter, propagandised version of the past.

That was one reason I wrote three volumes of historical fiction: The Green-Eyed Lama, covering 1937-1946; Sixty White Sheep, covering 1947-1952; and Uur River Stone, set around 1959 – the year our history textbooks mark as the official “victory of socialism.”

Together, the books explore what happened as private economic activity was dismantled and people lost the ability to run businesses, produce goods independently or freely expand their herds. What makes me particularly happy is that the books continue to be read widely, especially by young people. Mongolia’s younger generation is genuinely keen to understand the country’s history, and I find that very heartening.

By Mathieu Lemoine, Editor-in-Chief for Novastan English.

The post “The idea of having choices was so new”: Oyungerel Tsedevdamba on Mongolia’s democracy 36 years later appeared first on Novastan English.

In Ulaanbaatar’s ger districts, winter air pollution is usually discussed in terms of what households burn to keep warm. But after eight years of working on residential energy efficiency in Mongolia, GERES argues that another question is just as important: how much heat do those homes need in the first place? Its experience with insulation, green finance and climate adaptation shows how heat loss is connected to a much wider set of challenges around housing, health, finance and urban policy.

When temperatures in Ulaanbaatar fall towards -40°C, keeping a poorly insulated house warm can become a relentless task. Heat escapes through roofs, walls and foundations, as well as windows and doors. Stop heating, and the indoor temperature can fall rapidly. Keep heating, and households must consume more fuel simply to maintain reasonable thermal comfort.“

Read more on Novastan: “Heritage is something alive”: Ganzorig Miimaa reimagines Mongolia through photography

This is an everyday reality in the Mongolian capital’s sprawling ger districts, where traditional gers stand alongside detached houses, many of them self-built or constructed incrementally. Nearly 200,000 households – almost half of all households in Ulaanbaatar – live in these areas, according to GERES.

For years, the consequences have been visible in the city’s winter air. Mongolia banned raw coal in Ulaanbaatar in 2019, replacing it with processed briquettes and promoting other heating alternatives. Before the ban, raw-coal burning for heating in ger districts was estimated to contribute up to 80% of the capital’s winter air pollution.

But the French NGO GERES has approached the problem from another direction. Rather than looking only at the fuel being burned or the technology used to generate heat, it has spent eight years asking how much energy a house requires in the first place.

Novastan submitted written questions to GERES Mongolia, which were answered with contributions from Davaajargal B., Deputy Project Manager for the SOAP II and FRESH projects, and Quentin Moreau, GERES Regional Director.

“One important lesson from our work over the past eight years is that we cannot consider the heating system and the building itself separately,” GERES told Novastan.

A more efficient stove, a different fuel or a transition towards renewable energy can reduce emissions. But without an efficient building envelope, much of the heat produced will still escape.

“You can improve a stove, change the fuel, introduce a more efficient heating technology, or even transition to cleaner energy such as renewables. But if the heat immediately escapes through the roof, walls, windows and doors, a large part of that investment is lost.”

Reducing energy demand before changing the energy source

This principle lies behind Switch Off Air Pollution, or SOAP, which GERES and its partners began implementing in Mongolia in 2018. Its second phase, SOAP II, ran from 2022 to 2026 with support from the European Union’s SWITCH-Asia programme and other partners, combining home insulation, professional training, green finance and renewable-energy solutions.

The premise is relatively simple: improving a house’s thermal performance reduces its underlying energy demand. A household consequently requires less fuel to achieve the same indoor temperature.

In practice, that can mean intervening across almost the entire building envelope.

“The building envelope is often poorly insulated,” GERES explained. “Roofs, walls, foundations, windows and doors can all become significant pathways for heat loss.”

According to winter monitoring data provided to Novastan by GERES, fully insulated houses have recorded reductions in energy consumption of up to around 50%, depending on the house and level of insulation. Insulated houses used, on average, 2.7 tonnes less fuel annually than non-insulated houses, GERES says, corresponding to an estimated reduction of approximately five tonnes of CO2-equivalent emissions per household.

Households have also reported more stable indoor temperatures, less frequent stove firing, lower fuel consumption and less smoke and dust inside their homes. Some reported fewer winter-related illnesses among family members, less absenteeism from work and school and lower health-related expenditure.

Read more on Novastan: “Mongolia cannot be understood through one lens”: Dr. Mendee Jargalsaikhan on democracy, China and Central Asia

These latter observations are self-reported rather than evidence establishing a direct causal relationship between insulation and improved health. But they illustrate why GERES increasingly sees thermal renovation as extending beyond energy efficiency alone.

Once the thermal performance of the house improves, the organisation argues, households are also better positioned to adopt cleaner heating technologies.

“A cleaner heating system is much more effective when the house itself does not require excessive amounts of heat,” GERES said. “So we see insulation as creating a platform for the transition to cleaner energy, rather than as an alternative to that transition.”

The distinction is important. Insulation is not being proposed as a substitute for cleaner energy. It reduces the amount of energy that any heating system must provide.

When the households that need insulation cannot afford it

There is, however, a fundamental problem. A renovation that saves money and energy over the long term still requires money upfront.

SOAP II has worked with commercial banks and non-bank financial institutions to develop green financing for household renovation. By the end of the project, it had worked with five banks and three non-banking financial institutions on green-loan products, including offers with annual interest rates of 6%.

Yet GERES’s experience also exposed a significant access-to-finance gap.

“The households that were most vulnerable were often precisely those who could not qualify for a loan,” the organisation said. “They might have irregular or low incomes, insufficient collateral, or an already high income-to-debt ratio.”

The result is a difficult paradox: households for whom lower heating expenditure could matter most can be among those least able to finance the investment required to achieve it.

One response has been GERES’s Simple Solutions, or do-it-yourself, campaign. Rather than expecting a household to move directly from no insulation to a comprehensive renovation, the programme provides an incremental entry point into energy efficiency.

Residents have been trained to implement relatively simple measures themselves using affordable and locally available materials, while trained households and local volunteers can pass that knowledge to their neighbours. The project developed 14 simple insulation solutions addressing heat loss through windows, doors, floors, walls, roofs and chimneys. Implemented together, GERES says, they can reduce household heat loss by up to 16%. By the end of SOAP II, 4,481 households had adopted energy-saving improvements and 660 had received support for roof insulation.

The approach is deliberately progressive.

“Once households implemented even relatively simple insulation measures, they could directly feel the difference – the house was warmer, the indoor temperature was more stable, and the living environment was more comfortable,” GERES explained.

That experience could then encourage deeper renovation later.

For GERES, however, do-it-yourself insulation does not eliminate the financing problem. Instead, its experience points towards a blended financing approach capable of recognising different household income levels.

Commercial green loans can work for households with sufficient borrowing capacity. Lower-income households may require concessional finance, guarantees or derisking mechanisms, while the most vulnerable may need targeted subsidies or direct public support.

Energy efficiency may generate future savings and wider social benefits, but that does not make the initial investment affordable.

Building a renovation market

Financing households is only one side of the equation. Mongolia also needs companies and craftspeople capable of carrying out energy-efficient renovation at sufficient scale and quality.

Across the two SOAP phases, more than 320 micro, small and medium-sized enterprises have been trained, according to GERES.

But training construction workers alone does not create a functioning renovation market.

“There needs to be demand from households, suitable financial products, reliable technical standards, appropriate materials, qualified companies that can deliver good-quality work at a reasonable price, and a clear pathway for households throughout the renovation process – from energy assessment and financing to selecting service providers and ensuring quality,” GERES said.

Quality assurance is particularly important.

Insulation is not simply a matter of attaching material to a wall or roof. The material used, installation methods, junctions between parts of the building envelope and construction details all influence the resulting thermal performance and environmental footprint.

GERES has therefore tested the Dulaan Shiidel delivery model, conceived as a one-stop-shop bringing together the different actors involved in renovation and providing households with a clearer pathway through the process.

In a mature version of such a system, a household would not have to become an energy-efficiency expert simply to renovate its home. A one-stop-shop could assess the building, identify an appropriate renovation package, explain costs and benefits, connect the household to suitable financing, identify qualified contractors and help ensure the quality of the completed work.

Not every house requires the same intervention, and not every household can afford comprehensive renovation immediately. The system would therefore also need to allow households to move progressively towards deeper renovation as their financial capacity permits.

For GERES, the distinction is crucial. Mongolia does not simply need more internationally financed insulation projects. It needs an energy-efficient renovation market capable of functioning beyond them.

Not every Mongolian city is Ulaanbaatar

SOAP II has already begun testing whether the approach can travel.

In Darkhan-Uul province, around 30 insulation brigades were trained and more than 100 households completed insulation improvements. The project also developed a replication toolbox covering technical guidance, implementation methodologies and good practices for detached-house insulation.

But replication does not mean simply exporting an Ulaanbaatar template.

Secondary cities can share many of the capital’s challenges – detached houses, severe winters, high heating costs, varying construction quality, air pollution and households with limited resources for renovation – while differing significantly in their housing stock, energy infrastructure, fuel availability, construction practices, social fabric and household incomes.

“The underlying principles are transferable, but the exact solutions cannot simply be copied from Ulaanbaatar,” GERES said.

That experience is increasingly travelling much further than Darkhan.

Through FRESH, GERES is drawing on market-intermediation approaches developed under SOAP in Mongolia and its low-energy-consumption housing work in Tajikistan in very different climatic contexts, including Morocco and Benin.

The transferable element is not a particular insulation material or heating system. It is the combination of technical, social and financial intermediation required to connect demand with appropriate services and financing.

GERES also identifies a common problem across these contexts: existing and often self-built housing can constitute a blind spot for building regulation and public policy.

Experience elsewhere is, in turn, influencing the way GERES looks at Mongolia.

From extreme cold to extreme heat

Climate change is complicating the technical problem that Mongolian housing must solve.

Homes designed principally around surviving extreme winter cold may increasingly have to manage the opposite problem as well: indoor overheating during hotter summer periods.

That requires thinking not only about keeping heat inside in January but also about passive cooling: strategic thermal mass, shading, cross-ventilation and reflective building envelopes that can limit heat gain without creating dependence on energy-intensive air conditioning.

The challenge also extends beyond individual buildings.

Read more on Novastan: Bolor Lkhaajav: “Mongolia does not need to choose between Russia and China”

Experience from FRESH in Benin and Morocco has highlighted how exposure to extreme temperatures interacts with the surrounding urban environment. Nature-based solutions, urban greening, heat-action planning and early-warning systems can complement physical interventions at building level.

Applied to Mongolia, this perspective makes the ger districts more than an insulation problem.

Access to urban infrastructure and services, tenure security, urban planning and building regulation can influence whether households can or will invest in improving their homes. Urban climate-mitigation goals can affect the deployment of clean energy, while regulations designed around conventional construction may not adequately account for the characteristics of self-built housing.

Flood risk adds another layer. GERES points to rapid and unplanned urban growth on sloping terrain, combined with intense summer rainfall, as a reason future housing development may need to combine thermal renovation with integrated drainage, permeable-surface design and slope stabilisation.

Energy efficiency therefore becomes part of a broader question: what constitutes adequate and climate-resilient urban housing in Mongolia?

Mongolia and Europe: knowledge travelling both ways

European cooperation has played an important role in GERES’s work.

In June 2025, GERES organised a study visit to France and Belgium for Mongolian policymakers and housing-sector stakeholders under SOAP II and FRESH. The visit focused on thermal renovation, insulation, sustainable finance and institutional approaches to the energy transition in housing.

GERES points to European institutions and models as potential references for Mongolia. France’s Agence nationale de l’habitat (ANAH) and local energy and climate agencies offer examples of institutional structures supporting renovation and one-stop-shop delivery.

European experience also provides possible models for blended finance, combining public support and private capital to derisk investment, alongside green credit lines and loan-guarantee structures. Energy audits, passive insulation standards and thermal performance certification are other areas where European technical experience can be relevant.

GERES also cites Energiesprong, an approach based on standardised and prefabricated renovation systems and long-term energy-performance guarantees, as a potential reference for aggregating demand and reducing costs.

But the organisation stresses that knowledge can travel in the opposite direction too.

Mongolian partners have accumulated experience implementing low-cost and rapidly deployable thermal retrofits in detached and self-built housing under severe budget constraints. Community mobilisation around household renovation could offer lessons for European programmes struggling with low uptake or owner hesitation.

Ulaanbaatar’s extreme winter conditions also provide a demanding environment for understanding thermal boundary performance, vapour-barrier behaviour and passive heating and cooling strategies under severe temperature fluctuations.

The relationship is therefore not simply one of European expertise being transferred to Mongolia. As energy poverty and climate adaptation become more prominent concerns elsewhere, some of the practical solutions being tested in Mongolia may become increasingly relevant outside the country.

Scaling the system

After eight years, one of the hardest assumptions to overturn, according to GERES, has been that energy-efficient housing will naturally become a priority once people understand its benefits.

It has not.

For households, insulation competes with food, transport, education and other immediate expenses. Even when residents understand that renovation could make their homes warmer and reduce energy consumption, a substantial upfront investment can be difficult to justify when the financial payback is delayed. Coal subsidies can further distort that calculation.

For banks and other financial institutions, detached-house insulation can involve relatively small loans but comparatively complicated assessment and monitoring. The administrative process may not be very different from that required for a much larger green investment.

For construction companies, meanwhile, demand remains dispersed and uncertain. Without a predictable pipeline of work, companies have less incentive to invest in specialised workers and develop dedicated renovation businesses.

And for policymakers, changing the fuel or heating technology can appear more immediate than improving the underlying thermal performance of hundreds of thousands of individual homes.

“So perhaps the biggest lesson is that energy-efficient housing is not just a technical issue,” GERES told Novastan.

“It is simultaneously a household affordability issue, a financial-sector issue, a construction-market issue and a policy issue.”

Moving from thousands of retrofits to hundreds of thousands would consequently require more than another project.

At policy level, GERES argues that Mongolia needs a long-term national framework addressing the energy performance of existing detached houses, rather than requirements focused only on new buildings. Such a framework would need clear technical standards, quality requirements, incentives and responsibilities for national and local authorities.

At financing level, no single instrument will be sufficient. Commercial green loans can serve households capable of borrowing, while lower-income and vulnerable households will require some combination of concessional finance, guarantees, targeted subsidies and blended financing. Domestic public resources could also be combined with international capital to create a larger and more durable financing mechanism.

The construction sector would require a much larger pool of qualified workers and companies capable of delivering renovation consistently and to appropriate standards. That means training, certification, quality assurance, access to appropriate materials and, crucially, predictable demand.

And the process would have to become much simpler for households.

“A household should not have to become an energy-efficiency expert, find a contractor, understand technical standards, search for financing and manage the renovation process completely on its own,” GERES said.

A functioning one-stop-shop could instead guide households from the initial energy assessment through the choice of renovation package and financing to contractor selection and quality control.

For a city where winter air pollution has long focused attention on what hundreds of thousands of households burn to stay warm, this amounts to a significant shift in perspective.

The challenge is no longer simply to demonstrate that insulation works, nor to choose between insulation and cleaner heating. It is to create the financing, skills, standards, institutions and market capable of making both work together on a national scale.

As GERES put it: “We have to scale the system itself.”

By Mathieu Lemoine, Editor-in-Chief for Novastan English.

The post Keeping the heat in: Mongolia’s overlooked answer to Ulaanbaatar’s air pollution appeared first on Novastan English.

On 16 September, Seoul hosted the first-ever Korea–Central Asia Summit, bringing President Lee Jae-myung together with the heads of state of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan – a dialogue that has run at ministerial level since 2007, now elevated to heads of state and producing a joint “Seoul Declaration” on supply-chain cooperation (Seoul Shinmun, 李대통령 16일 첫 중앙아시아 정상회의). Most coverage has treated this as a diplomatic first, full stop – a historic photograph, five new bilateral memoranda, a summit that “elevates” a relationship, nothing more. The more interesting story is why it took this particular shape now, in September 2026 rather than at any point over the preceding three decades, and what that shape reveals about a quiet shift in how Seoul thinks about the region.

From aid recipient to resource partner

For most of the three decades since 1992, Seoul’s relationship with Central Asia has combined development assistance with a real, if modest, industrial footprint – Daewoo’s car assembly plant in Uzbekistan since the 1990s and Samsung’s household-appliance manufacturing among the longest-running examples of Korean direct investment in the region (Modern Diplomacy, “K-Silk Road Boosts Seoul’s Central Asia Presence”). But that investment sat for decades within a relationship organized primarily around cooperation and technical assistance rather than resource dependence. That balance is now shifting. The Presidential Office frames this summit’s central purpose as combining Central Asia’s critical-mineral reserves with Korean processing technology – supply-chain language layered on top of the older development framing, not replacing it outright (Korea Herald). The anxiety behind this is concrete: by 2025, South Korea’s mineral-import dependence had reached roughly 99.7 percent, with more than four-fifths sourced from China (Kim et al., “Central Asia as New Battle Grounds”).

The build-out has been rapid and institutional, not rhetorical. Just three days before the summit, Korea’s industry ministry convened the first-ever “C5+1” meeting of industry ministers with all five Central Asian states, agreeing to build supply chains spanning mining, refining, high-value materials processing and finished-goods manufacturing, alongside a parallel track on industrial parks, smart-factory cooperation and manufacturing AI (Newspim, 한-중앙아 산업장관회의). On the ground, Korea’s own state geological survey (KIGAM) has agreed with Uzbekistan to carry out joint exploration of nickel and cobalt deposits at Sultanuvays, with the explicit logic – laid out by Korean officials themselves – that public-sector exploration is needed to de-risk projects private mining firms won’t touch without proven reserves; if the deposits prove commercially viable, the plan is to move toward a joint venture and eventually refining and production, with Korean firms invited in at that stage (Herald Business, “중앙아시아에서 여는 핵심광물 협력의 새 길”). In his own bilateral meeting with Uzbek President Mirziyoyev ahead of the summit, President Lee explicitly proposed pairing Korean processing technology with the Asian Development Bank’s financing capacity to stabilize Central Asian mineral supply chains (Segye Ilbo) – a formulation that captures Seoul’s emerging model exactly: Korea supplies expertise, others supply capital and territory.

The connectivity problem

None of this works if the minerals cannot reach Korean plants, and here the summit’s ambition runs ahead of infrastructure – though it is worth being precise about which infrastructure. Neither Korea nor Central Asia shares a border with the other, so cargo has, in principle, several ways to travel: north through Russia, west across the Caspian toward Turkey and the Black Sea (the “Middle Corridor”), or east and south through China to a Pacific port. Public Korean commentary on the K-Silk Road initiative has invoked the Middle Corridor as a rhetorical alternative to routes dependent on China’s Belt and Road infrastructure (BISI, “Korea’s new ‘K-Silk Road’ Initiative in Central Asia”), but there is little public evidence that Seoul has committed to the Trans-Caspian route specifically as the backbone of its minerals strategy. If anything, the available evidence points the other way: a peer-reviewed routing study comparing options for Korea–Central Asia cargo found that a China-transit corridor – Incheon to Qingdao to Horgos to Almaty – outperformed alternatives on cost, the single factor logistics firms weighted most heavily (Wang and Yeo, “Selecting a Cargo Transport Route to Central Asia”). The same BISI analysis is candid on this point: China’s Belt and Road infrastructure is likely to remain the dominant channel for regional development projects regardless of what Korea builds, precisely because it already exists at scale.

A Korean government-commissioned study of logistics barriers in Central Asia, based on interviews with Korean freight-forwarding firms already operating in the region, found customs procedures and inadequate transport infrastructure – not any single missing corridor – to be the two most severe obstacles, ranked above financing or licensing constraints (National Knowledge Information System, 중앙아시아 물류장벽 연구). Read against that finding, the more accurate framing is not that Seoul’s mineral strategy hinges on completing a specific Trans-Caspian route, but that it depends on a broader and messier connectivity problem – customs harmonization, storage capacity, transport reliability – that touches every route out of the region, Chinese-transit ones included.

Seoul’s response has been to avoid the corridor-building role entirely regardless of which route eventually dominates. Rather than financing rail or port capacity itself, Korea is positioning as a technology and processing partner layered onto infrastructure others pay for – hence President Lee’s pitch to route Korean expertise through Asian Development Bank financing rather than bilateral Korean capital in his meeting with President Mirziyoyev (Segye Ilbo).

Why now

Two pressures help explain the timing, though they are best read as a plausible interpretation rather than an explicitly stated Korean rationale. The first is status, and here Seoul has been unusually candid in its own words. President Lee has framed the summit explicitly as part of a wider diplomatic diversification, telling his own senior secretaries that “the global order is rapidly becoming multipolar” and that “this is exactly the moment to join hands with more countries and expand our diplomatic reach into more diverse regions” (Daily Hankook, 유럽서 첨단산업·중앙아서 핵심광물) – a framing his own spokesperson echoed by describing Korea as having “joined the resource-diplomacy race” already under way among the major powers (Asia Economy, 강대국 ‘러브콜’에 몸값 뛴 중앙亞). That timing follows a French state visit built around advanced-industry cooperation, suggesting a deliberate, sequenced diplomatic expansion rather than a Central Asia-specific reaction. It sits, too, against a crowded backdrop: roughly ten “C5+1”-style formats now link Central Asia to outside powers, Japan’s dating back two decades and Washington’s marking its tenth anniversary last November with over $100 billion in announced deals (CIRSD; U.S. State Department). For a country that has cultivated middle-power status as deliberate policy, being among the last major economies without a leaders’-level format with the region plausibly carried a cost measured in standing, even if no Korean official has said so in those terms.

Central Asia is not a passive audience

The five governments arriving in Seoul are practiced at extracting better terms from competing suitors without committing to any one of them. Kazakhstan runs parallel Caspian and Chinese overland links simultaneously rather than choosing between them (Times of Central Asia). Uzbekistan’s own framing of cooperation with Korea explicitly stresses local refining capacity and technology transfer over raw extraction (Kim et al.) – a hedge against what regional analysts call a “green resource curse,” and a pointed contrast with Chinese capital, which regional governments increasingly criticize for financing without technology transfer. Uzbekistan’s insistence, in the KIGAM nickel-cobalt talks, on holding open the option of a joint venture rather than a straightforward extraction concession is one small but telling instance of that same instinct at work – Tashkent structuring the deal so that value stays onshore if the deposit proves out. With Washington, Tokyo, Brussels and now Seoul all running comparable outreach in the same eighteen-month window, the five republics can accept summits and memoranda from all of them while committing exclusively to none, and each new suitor arriving in the region only strengthens that leverage rather than diminishing it.

An open bet, not a settled shift

The institutional architecture – the ministerial-to-presidential upgrade, the new C5+1 industry channel, joint KIGAM exploration on the ground – is real and represents coordination that didn’t exist two years ago. But the connectivity infrastructure needed to make a minerals strategy commercially viable does not yet exist in reliable form on any route, and Korea’s own logistics-sector research says as much: firms already moving freight through the region, not diplomats drafting communiqués, are the ones flagging customs and infrastructure as the binding constraint, regardless of whether that freight ultimately crosses the Caspian or transits China. What the summit signals, then, is a bet rather than a breakthrough: that being an early, technically credible partner is valuable now, even before the logistics catch up, and that Gulf, European and multilateral capital will eventually close the connectivity gap into which Korean firms can plug their offtake deals. Whether that bet pays off depends less on what is signed in Seoul this week than on whether the region’s transport and customs bottlenecks, on whichever route ends up mattering most, get resolved soon enough to matter.

By Kodirjon Eshonkulov.

Kodirjon Eshonkulov is an independent researcher specializing in Central Asian geopolitics, transboundary infrastructure, and relations with the European Union. He is a graduate of the Graduate School of International Studies at Ajou University in South Korea. Since 2017, he has worked as a correspondent and television journalist covering social and political reforms in Uzbekistan.

The post From Development Partner to Strategic Supplier: What Seoul’s First Central Asia Summit Really Signals? appeared first on Novastan English.

Bruce Pannier has watched Central Asia change for more than three decades – from the final years of the Soviet Union to a generation that no longer remembers it. In an interview with Novastan English Editor-in-Chief Mathieu Lemoine, the veteran journalist reflects on independent media, Russia’s changing role, generational shifts, overlooked communities and what outsiders still misunderstand about Central Asia.

In the summer of 1990, Bruce Pannier arrived at Tashkent State University. The Soviet Union still existed. Central Asia’s five future independent states did not.

More than three decades later, Pannier has become one of the most familiar English-language voices on Central Asia. At Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), he co-created and co-hosted Majlis, a podcast that brought together journalists, scholars and analysts to discuss developments across the region and, increasingly, to amplify perspectives from Central Asians themselves.

Today, he is part of the team behind Turan, a project covering Central Asia and the wider Turkic world. In this interview with Novastan, Pannier looks back at more than three decades of reporting and reflects on the changing media landscape, the impact of the war in Ukraine, generational change, overlooked communities and a region that, in his view, is increasingly defining its future on its own terms.

Novastan: You have been covering Central Asia for several decades. How did your interest in the region first begin?

Bruce Pannier: I was learning Russian and doing Soviet Studies in college. But I suppose everything started with two books: Eastern Approaches by Sir Fitzroy MacLean and Setting the East Ablaze by Peter Hopkirk. That was in the early and mid-1980s.

The leading American authority on Central Asia was Edward Allworth, who taught at Columbia University. I was fortunate to go and study under him. He loved Central Asia and, best of all, he knew thousands of years of the region’s history. He treated the Soviet period as just another chapter in that history, so we never looked at Central Asia through a Russian or Soviet lens.

Then I went to summer school at Tashkent State University in 1990, and I was completely hooked after that.

Were there particular places in Central Asia – a city, a region, a border area, a mountain landscape, a desert, a bazaar or an everyday encounter – that changed the way you understood the countries and societies you were covering?

Many. I worked in villages in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan in 1992 and 1993.

They all had similar lives, working on farms growing crops or herding animals, but there were different ways to do this work in every village and different attitudes about living and working in rural areas.

I was amazed to find out how religious people remained there. I arrived in spring 1992 and, in one of the first villages I worked in, someone died. We all went to the very Muslim funeral, and almost everyone knew the prayers.

I was doing sociological research and one of the questions I asked was: “What building or facility would you like to see in your village?” The answer every time – and I mean every time – was a mosque.

I certainly gained a new respect for herders. I was instructed to do what the people in the villages did. I especially disliked picking cotton, but taking a herd out to pasture was my type of work.

You have a few dogs, a stick to keep stragglers moving and a couple of rocks to throw in front of animals, usually sheep, that are moving too far ahead. You find a good grazing area and sit under a tree watching the animals eat. When it’s time to go back, you round up the herd and head back to the village.

If the job paid better, I would be doing it now.

Of course, the inter-ethnic violence in Osh in June 2010 was a shock. I had thought, or at least hoped, that was all behind everyone.

Remember, I was at Tashkent State in summer 1990 when it happened before, though we couldn’t get much information about what was going on. When I was in Osh and other parts of the Fergana Valley in 1992, the events of 1990 seemed very far away. People didn’t talk about it much.

I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the mountains. I love mountains and enjoyed the many times I was in the Central Asian mountains.

I liked doing the trip between Bishkek and Osh in a marshrutka just because of the views. The road was in terrible shape until the end of the 1990s, but it didn’t matter to me when I was staring out of the window, or when we stopped along the road.

One time I was with a Kazakh friend in Shymbulak – then called Chimbulak. It’s a good ski area now, and even in 1992 there was a ski lift there. There were no skiers, but I convinced one of the park rangers, for five dollars, to turn on the ski lift long enough to take my friend and me to the top.

I remember him saying, in Russian, “For God’s sake, don’t break anything.”

We walked back down, and the view was magnificent.

And obviously, the Silk Road cities were amazing. Samarkand looks so different now compared with the early 1990s, but even back then it had a charm.

It was not well tended, and the old buildings looked old and in need of repair, but it really made me appreciate how old they were. And since I worked in villages, I could imagine what it was like for a farmer or herder to visit one of the big and bustling cities.

When you first started following Central Asia, what did outside observers most often misunderstand about the region? Has that changed today?

Well, when I first started following Central Asia, there were not many outside observers. Some Western media outlets were having difficulties even spelling the names of the Central Asian countries.

Probably the biggest misconception was that the people in Central Asia had accepted that they were part of the Soviet Union. When I was at TashGU that summer, there were people from all over Central Asia studying there, and it was clear they regarded Russia as a colonizer that was pilfering the region’s resources and trying to force them to become a “Soviet man or woman.”

That has clearly changed since the USSR collapsed. Since the Kremlin launched its full-scale war against Ukraine in February 2022, we have seen some lively discussions in Central Asia about colonization and exploitation under Tsarist and then Soviet rule. Even the leaderships of some Central Asian countries are calling it a dark period in the region’s history.

Read more on Novastan: “I only needed a passport” : In Ukraine, Central Asian prisoners of wars caught between loyalty and regret

Majlis became one of the most recognizable English-language formats for discussing Central Asia. What was the original idea behind the podcast?

Muhammad Tahir and I started Majlis in 2014 in response to the increase in fighting in northern Afghanistan. Our first programme was about Turkmenistan being the Achilles heel of Central Asian security.

We weren’t sure then that we would ever do any more podcasts, but RFE/RL management liked it, and I agreed there was a wide variety of topics beyond deteriorating security in northern Afghanistan that we could cover, starting with the great reporting RFE/RL’s Central Asian services were doing in local languages and Russian.

Muhammad was something of a showman. He really embraced being the host, with me as the “in-house” RFE/RL expert. Majlis gave us a chance to show off our people in the Central Asian services and promote people outside RFE/RL who had made, or were making, a name for themselves in the field of Central Asian affairs.

Our guests really propelled the podcast forward, and I’m glad to see so many of them are now leading scholars in the field of Central Asian studies.

Why was it important for Majlis to include voices from Central Asia itself, and how did their perspectives shape the discussions?

There was often a difference in interpretations of events in Central Asia – sometimes large differences, but mostly nuances.

Someone like me, who has studied the region, lived there briefly and travelled widely, came to different conclusions about what events in the region meant and where they were leading Central Asia.

For about the first 20 years after independence, there were not many Central Asians who could articulate, in English, their views on the course of events. But when they started to appear, Muhammad and I were, firstly, very happy and, secondly, determined to give the voices of Central Asia – often people in their 20s and 30s – an opportunity to explain what was happening in their homelands.

It was possible to disagree with what some of the people from Central Asia said, but it was important to hear how they viewed the evolving world inside and outside Central Asia.

In the end, it’s their story. I think it made for a better understanding of the region for people outside it.

Were there episodes or discussions of Majlis that particularly stayed with you because they captured a turning point in the region?

Several dealt with the deterioration of security in northern Afghanistan. Most of our guests on this topic were from Afghanistan and supporters of Ghani, or at least not supporters of the Taliban, or from Central Asia. The gradual depression with which they spoke about events unfolding in northern Afghanistan between 2014 and 2021 certainly caused me to consider more and more the possibility that the Taliban would reconquer Afghanistan.

Several of the podcasts we did about women’s rights and gender-based violence were revealing, and I learned a lot, but I was troubled by some of the assessments given by guests.

One that really moved me was the description Freedom for Eurasia founder Leila Seiitbek gave of how she was a victim of ala kachuu, bride kidnapping, and escaped because she smoked a cigarette and her kidnapper’s family rejected her as a forced bride.

How has reporting on Central Asia changed since the 1990s, especially in terms of access, sources and risks for local journalists?

When I started work for the Open Media Research Institute (OMRI) in March 1995, the internet was not much help. People at OMRI would give me photocopies of current articles from Central Asian newspapers. Sometimes I had access to the actual newspapers, though these were at least several days old and usually more like a week or two old.

Back in the 1990s, certainly in the early and middle 1990s, journalists and media outlets in Central Asia were freer to write about what they wanted, with the exception of Turkmenistan. Kazakhstan had a vibrant independent media scene, very much like the one developing in Kyrgyzstan.

But even in Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, journalists were pushing the limits of coverage on matters such as corruption, the deteriorating socio-economic situation, questionable state policies and other topics.

This situation changed as governments faced increasing challenges and decided that some criticism might be valid, but that some outlets were reporting too much about problems. In Tajikistan’s case, during the 1992-1997 civil war, this could be deadly, and more than a dozen journalists, foreign and local, were essentially assassinated.

By the end of the 1990s, it was becoming more difficult for journalists in Uzbekistan to report freely on a wide range of topics. The government would find charges such as fraud or failure to pay taxes – something unrelated to journalism – to use against journalists who were exposing shortcomings in the country. This became a standard practice, and even President Islam Karimov’s nephew, who was an independent journalist, was forcibly committed to a psychiatric hospital for his reporting.

Now, journalists in each country understand where the boundaries in reporting are, and there is a lot of self-censorship being practised.

How would you describe the current generation of journalists in Central Asia compared with those reporting in the 1990s or 2000s?

I suppose the biggest difference is the range of media now available. Everything is on the web now. Back in the 1990s, outlets were confined to the basic three – television, radio and print media, what people now refer to as “traditional media.”

It was easier for governments to shut down independent outlets among these three, or pressure outlets that featured criticism of government policies. That made it very difficult for journalists at independent outlets.

Today, the same pressures still exist, but “non-traditional” media are giving independent journalists opportunities they did not have in the past. That is why many of the best reports on Central Asia are coming from people with YouTube channels. Facebook and other social networks are also giving journalists – whether journalists by training or “citizen” journalists – opportunities to speak about corruption and state mismanagement.

I think the journalists in the 1990s and 2000s were just as brave and anxious to report the big news affecting their countries as journalists today.

I would mention one development that showed me that, given the chance, good independent journalism could take root in any of the Central Asian countries.

When Shavkat Mirziyoyev became Uzbekistan’s president in late 2016, he eased state control over the media and encouraged journalists to report on the important things happening in Uzbekistan. And they did. Given some space, journalists in Uzbekistan went right after corrupt officials and reported on other topics they would not have touched during the last decade or so of President Islam Karimov’s rule.

In fact, it proved to be too candid, and Mirziyoyev’s government had to rein in some of the coverage. But it showed the spirit of independent, objective journalism was still alive in Uzbekistan and that all it needed was an opportunity to blossom.

Independent media now operate across very different spaces – inside the region, in exile and through social media, podcasts, YouTube and investigative platforms. Has this changed what independent journalism means in Central Asia?

Certainly. The role of “non-traditional” media is becoming more important all the time.

Some of the cutting-edge criticism of policies or officials in Tajikistan or Uzbekistan has been coming from YouTube channels. This is true to a lesser extent, in my opinion, in the other three countries.

And, of course, the YouTube channels and websites such as Turkmen.news and Hronikatm.com dealing with Turkmenistan are all operating from outside the country.

Which independent media outlets or journalistic initiatives from Central Asia do you think deserve more international attention today?

In Kazakhstan, Vlast.kz, Orda.kz and KazTAG come to mind as good independent media outlets that could use some international attention and, if possible, funding. Unfortunately, Orda.kz recently ceased operations after legal difficulties that included its chief editor being sentenced to eight years in prison. I’m sure there are others, but those are three off the top of my head.

In Kyrgyzstan, Kloop Media is currently banned from operating inside the country. Temirov Live has also done some great investigative reporting and was closed down. Kaktus Media is still working in Kyrgyzstan, but it is one of only a few independent media outlets left.

The Central Asia Barometer was a great initiative that did some fantastic survey work. They had European funding. Unfortunately, they were pressured into stopping work. It would be great to find a way for them to resume operations.

What I would like to see generally is some form of cooperation or organization that brings independent journalists from Europe and Central Asia together. I know Vlast.kz and Orda.kz have employed Europeans, and the results were notable.

If it were possible to get funding for a media outlet covering EU-Central Asian cooperation, such as Global Gateway, and employing young European and Central Asian journalists, I think the results would be excellent and very enlightening.

What role have exile media, independent journalists and regional analysts played in keeping Central Asian stories visible internationally?

It varies from country to country. Independent journalists, including those working in non-traditional media, have been instrumental in calling out corrupt government officials who are then fired when authorities perceive the attention these reports are garnering nationally and, in some cases, internationally. I’m thinking mainly about YouTube channels.

In Turkmenistan’s case, exile media are almost the only source of objective news about what is happening inside the country. Obviously, RFE/RL’s Turkmen Service, Azatlyk, is an exception, but Turkmen.news and Hronikatm.com are essential sites for following events in Turkmenistan.

There are some absolutely fantastic regional analysts, and since I am afraid I might forget someone, I will not list any names. So much of the best material appearing in English these days is being produced by Central Asians – and it is not translated into English; it is being written by them in English.

What can international media, donors and regional platforms do to support Central Asian journalists without distorting their priorities or making them more vulnerable?

This is a tough question. On the one hand, international publicity provides some protection for journalists – and activists and politicians – in Central Asia, and often keeps them out of prison or at least pressures authorities into some leniency.

On the other hand, in the ever-changing world, it is impossible to stay focused on any one topic. When attention wanes, these journalists are vulnerable.

International publicity around a particular journalist can also make that person a special target of authorities who do not want independent journalists or media outlets. If they work for foreign media, such as RFE/RL, governments can attack them as doing the bidding of their foreign paymaster.

The war in Ukraine has changed how many people in Europe and the United States look at Central Asia. What has it revealed about the region?

Deep-seated resentment against having been colonized, and growing efforts by many Central Asians and their governments to distance themselves from Russia.

This is particularly evident in the new security and defence partnerships the Central Asian states are forming with Türkiye, first and foremost, but also with Azerbaijan and some of the Gulf states.

Following on from that, I think Central Asians are understanding more and more that they do not need to depend on Russia, certainly not to the extent they did for the first 30 years after independence.

Russia is a leading trade partner and will remain so for the foreseeable future, but it is now clear that there are other partners, and some have ethnic or religious ties to Central Asia that Russia does not have.

Even if the war in Ukraine ends tomorrow, I don’t think there’s any way to go back to the status quo prior to February 2022.

Read more on Novastan: Who Made the Nations of Central Asia?

I still see articles that refer to Central Asia as Russia’s “backyard.” Central Asians never viewed it that way, and now they have less and less reason to accept such characterizations.

Has the war accelerated a real diversification of Central Asia’s foreign relations, or are we still overstating the change?

Accelerated. Definitely.

Prior to February 2022, Russia and China were the dominant partners for trade, investment and security, including energy security. Everyone else was at best running a distant second.

Read more on Novastan: Money, boxes and absent men: the hidden economy reshaping Central Asia

China and Russia are still important partners for Central Asia, Russia perhaps less so now. But many countries have stepped up their interaction with Central Asia. The EU and the Gulf Arab states have all increased their roles in and importance for Central Asia.

Türkiye and the Organization of Turkic States are also increasingly part of Central Asia’s future. Azerbaijan’s role in the OTS and as a key country in the Middle Corridor is bringing it closer to Central Asia, and in November 2025 there was even a “C6” meeting with the five Central Asian states and Azerbaijan.

Some people used to say Russia was the policeman and China the banker for Central Asia. Now the Central Asian states have options for both security and finance.

What are the social changes in Central Asia that outsiders tend to miss because they focus too much on presidents and geopolitics?

The younger generation, people under 30 or 35 years old, is very tech-savvy.

Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, and to a lesser degree Kyrgyzstan, are all moving forward quickly and modernizing everything from architecture to online documents and payments. These three countries are becoming modern states.

Do you see a generational shift in Central Asia, especially among young people who no longer remember the Soviet Union?

Definitely, and it’s not only that almost everyone under 35 or 40 has a mobile phone and knows how to use computers.

For young people in the 1990s, it was often enough that their countries were independent. They remembered clearly what life was like as part of the Soviet Union and, even if socio-economic conditions were often not better, and at times perhaps even worse, they were independent and there was a feeling they were masters of their own destiny. Change could happen.

The current generation wants to be masters of their own destiny but often views the entrenched leadership in their countries as the primary obstacle to positive transformation. There is scepticism among some young people that their governments are willing to make changes that benefit the younger generation.

In the Soviet days, there wasn’t much people could do to change policies made in Moscow, but now they believe it is, or at least should be, possible to change policies in their own countries.

It must be frustrating for many younger people when they see their leaders cling to policies that benefit the regime, not the masses.

Which communities, regions or issues within Central Asia remain most invisible in international coverage?

There are many, but I’m just going to mention the situations of the Karakalpaks in the Republic of Karakalpakstan in western Uzbekistan and the Ismailis in the Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Oblast in eastern Tajikistan.

In both cases, the rights of minority groups are being trampled as the governments in those countries attempt to forcibly assimilate these people.

I would also mention that the situation of ethnic minorities in Turkmenistan receives almost no attention – in fairness, because it is so difficult to obtain information.

Central Asia is still relatively little known in France and Europe. What stories would you recommend European-based media cover more often?

I think the obvious story is the Middle Corridor, or Trans-Caspian International Transport Route. People in Europe don’t know much about their countries’ trade with Central Asia.

Austria, Germany, France, Italy, Romania and some other European countries are buying Kazakh oil, which is especially important now as EU countries try to stop buying Russian oil. France buys uranium from Kazakhstan, and other countries in Europe probably will as more nuclear power plants are built.

If you buy dried apricots or raisins in Poland, Germany, France, the UK or the Baltic countries, there is a good chance the dried fruit came from Uzbekistan.

Many European travellers have gone to Central Asia. Marco Polo, of course, but more recently, in the 19th century, Arminius Vámbéry from Hungary, Aurel Stein, also a Hungarian who became a British citizen, Sven Hedin from Sweden – and yes, I know about his later connection to Nazi Germany – the Frenchman Paul Pelliot, and others.

Their stories are fascinating, and they are stories of Europeans in Central Asia.

Of course, there is always the ancient Silk Road that linked Europe to Central Asia long ago. The two regions have been in contact for a long time.

Interestingly, although the climate and landscape are very different between the two regions, they are located roughly at the same latitudes, meaning if you travel straight west from Central Asia you end up in Europe, and vice versa going straight east from Europe, with only the Caucasus or southern Russia separating them.

You are now working on Turan, a project focused on Central Asia and the wider Turkic world. What are you hoping to bring to readers through it?

First, there are a lot of stories about Central Asia that are under-reported or not reported at all by media outside the region. That has generally been true since the five countries became independent in late 1991.

Second, unfortunately, there is not much money for outlets and organizations in Europe that are interested in Central Asia. The most obvious example is Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, which has been forced to drastically reduce its coverage of Central Asia due to budget cuts.

Turan hopes to fill that void to some extent and bring Central Asia’s stories to an audience on YouTube – and not only Central Asia’s stories, but those from more broadly across the Caspian, including Türkiye and Iran.

The Turan Research Center is part of the Yorktown Institute, so the coverage style leans towards that of a think tank. I think that’s noticeable from the topics and the language used. Many of the reports are based on articles written for the Turan Research Center.

I am not running the channel. I’m just a member of the team. The driving forces are the chief editor and the people doing the graphics.

What advice would you give to a relatively small independent media outlet like Novastan trying to cover Central Asia seriously?

I think Novastan is doing a great job, especially with covering youth culture. I like that Novastan covers niche topics like the French-Uzbek theatre presentation, as well as big stories such as the shrinking Caspian or the lexicon of Kazakh decolonization.

The photographs of scenes from everyday life in Central Asia are excellent.

Many – all? – of your writers have travelled or lived in Central Asia, and it shows in the coverage and choice of topics.

I think advertising is the biggest drawback for Novastan, but again, many organizations are facing this problem. Advertising requires money and a social media team.

The material is there, and in English, French and German. The problem is getting enough people to see it and recommend it, so that it comes to the attention of a wider audience.

For a European outlet like Novastan, what is the best way to work with Central Asian journalists – not only by quoting them as sources, but by building real editorial partnerships and giving their perspectives more visibility?

One possibility is offering Central Asian journalists, including those working for state media, an opportunity to write for European outlets. It would likely require translation.

And the matter of payment could be complicated, since it could lead to accusations of them being funded, and therefore influenced, by foreign sources.

But if some Central Asian journalists were willing to write without expecting remuneration, simply for the exposure in Europe and a chance to boost their credentials and CVs, it would solve that problem.

In the case of journalists writing for state media, they could present the state version of events. Agree or disagree, it is a view that needs to be taken into consideration when assessing the situation in Central Asia.

After all these years covering Central Asia, what still surprises you about the region?

There are always surprises. For me personally, the biggest surprise – and it is a happy one – is seeing the five countries getting along so well.

I travelled through Central Asia quite a bit, especially in the 1990s. I was in every country and listened to what people said about the neighbouring countries. A lot of it was negative, which was really strange to me, since when I was in summer school in Tashkent in 1990 there were people from all over Central Asia, many different ethnicities, and they all agreed that Moscow, the Soviet government, was exploiting them.

There was a sort of equality, a kinship that formed between the peoples of the different Central Asian Soviet republics, a quiet mutual agreement that they were all being neglected and mistreated.

But once they were independent, there were some cruel comments about the neighbours and other indigenous ethnic groups. And, of course, the worst expression of this was in southern Kyrgyzstan in June 2010.

I was there, mostly in Osh, speaking to people from every side, and it was often chilling and always extremely disappointing and sad to hear what so many people were saying at that time.

That situation is at least becoming better now. That sense of brotherhood and common cause I heard in talks with groups of Central Asians at Tashkent State in 1990 is returning, though now the Central Asians are stronger, no longer victims of a colonizer.

Central Asia is still often covered internationally through politics, security and geopolitics. Which authors, musicians, filmmakers, photographers, artists or cultural works from the region would you recommend to readers who want to understand Central Asia differently?

This would also be a very long list, and I worry about leaving somebody out.

For material in English, and often in Russian, some of the authors I would recommend are Temur Umarov, Assel Tutumlu, Diana Kudaibergen and Asel Doolotkeldieva, just to name a few. There are obviously dozens more.

You can find the work of Central Asian scholars on several Western websites, and I will just mention the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and the Oxus Society.

I will say it’s worth looking at the media outlets in all five Central Asian countries as much as possible. Even state media and the journalists working for these outlets are worth following, even in places like Turkmenistan where almost every article mentions “Hero Arkadag.”

It is one side of the story, the side the governments tell their people.

There are many good journalists and outlets outside Central Asia that do fantastic jobs keeping track of events in the region or posting photos of life there that convey to people what it’s like to be there, what you see in front of your face.

When I was working there in the 1990s, hardly any people from the West were going there, so nobody knew much about it. Now there are many people writing about Central Asia who have travelled extensively there, spent a lot of time in one or several places, or have just been following events and writing about them.

The level of knowledge is so much higher than it was. It makes me smile all the time to see how many great people are sharing their deep knowledge and experiences of Central Asia with the rest of the world.

I am not familiar with contemporary filmmakers and musicians, so I really couldn’t say much about them. I would recommend watching the movies Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan are making about their history.

It is important to see how their forefathers are portrayed and think about the effects that has on the people living in these countries today.

By Mathieu Lemoine, Editor-in-Chief for Novastan-English.

The post Bruce Pannier: “Central Asians never viewed their region as Russia’s backyard” appeared first on Novastan English.

Following a small river from the mountains into the Kazakh steppe, filmmaker Kristina Mikhailova set out to imagine its dreams. Five years later, the journey had become a portrait of Kazakhstan told through the voices of its women – and an intensely personal exploration of freedom, identity and belonging.

A small river runs for 130 kilometres through Kazakhstan, beginning among mountain peaks and glaciers before gradually disappearing into the vast landscape below. When filmmaker Kristina Mikhailova first decided to follow the Aksay from beginning to end, she imagined making a film about the river’s dreams.

Five years later, that idea had become something much larger.

Along the river, Kristina interviewed around 100 women, asking each an unusual question: if you were a river, what kind of river would you be? Fifteen of them eventually became part of River Dreams, a 98-minute film in which the Aksay serves simultaneously as landscape, witness and metaphor.

What emerged is not simply a portrait of a river. Through women’s stories of freedom, violence, dignity and belonging, the film became what its director describes as “a political portrait of Kazakhstan through a female perspective”.

The film has since travelled internationally, receiving around 30 festival invitations and and winning the Prize of the Ecumenical Jury in the Forum section at the 2026 Berlinale. It has also drawn enthusiastic audiences closer to home, including three sold-out screenings in Kazakhstan and a packed morning screening in Kyrgyzstan, where it won Best Feature-Length Documentary Film at the UmutDoc International Documentary Film Festival in Bishkek.

Yet bringing the film to a wider audience in Kazakhstan itself has proved much more difficult. Kristina says censorship has prevented River Dreams from securing the domestic release she wants.

For Novastan, Kristina Mikhailova spoke with Novastan Editor-in-Chief Mathieu Lemoine about the “sisterhood of rivers”, the women she met along the Aksay, her Ukrainian grandmother’s memories, female agency and violence, her identity as a Russian Kazakhstani, and the painful experience of feeling deeply attached to a country that she sometimes feels is pushing her away.

A sisterhood of rivers

Novastan: The film began with the idea of following the Aksay River for its entire 130-kilometre course. What were you looking for when you first set out?

Kristina Mikhailova: When I started filming, I was very young. This was the idea for my first feature-length film: I wanted to follow the river all the way, 130 kilometres from beginning to end, and imagine what it might dream about – to film those dreams as I saw them.

But after walking the entire river alone, I saw how much it changed along the way. I wanted to capture those changes and see reality through the river’s eyes, to personify it. I was working with a post-humanist approach and looking for a way to give the river a voice.

That is how I came up with the idea of asking the girls who lived along the river what kind of rivers they would be.

That question immediately helped me understand the person in front of me and shape the conversation in a way that allowed her to share something very important to her. In the Kazakhstani context, very little space is often given to women’s perspectives. It mattered to me that, as a woman, I was creating such a space, and that through the film other women could have that space too.

Gradually, what emerged was a political portrait of Kazakhstan through a female perspective.

Why did you choose the Aksay in particular?

Aksay, or Aksaika, is a very small, modest river. I wanted to film precisely this kind of inconspicuous river, because we have so many of them.

Its journey is typical of many mountain rivers in Central Asia: they begin among mountain peaks and glaciers and then disappear somewhere in the steppe or flow into lakes, never reaching the ocean.

By filming Aksay, I was also filming all these other rivers. I called it a “sisterhood of rivers”.

It is funny because I once heard someone say that the film shows some of the negative aspects of women’s lives in Kazakhstan because I had chosen the “wrong” river – one that was too insignificant. Apparently, if I had chosen some great, “proper” river, the story would have turned out differently.

I doubt it.

Making female agency visible

You interviewed around 100 women during the making of the film, with 15 eventually appearing in the final version. What did these encounters teach you?

First and foremost, I learned about myself.

Recently, I started thinking about how I changed over the five years it took to make the film. Of course, I established myself as a filmmaker, my name became known and new opportunities opened up. But something much more personal happened too: I discovered myself as a woman of Kazakhstan. I saw who I was.

Through meeting other women, I realised how different we are and how many pains we share. I came to understand relationships between men and women better – and men themselves, too.

For me, it was a genuine step up in my understanding of myself. One film led to so many personal discoveries.

Freedom seems to be one of the central themes of the film. Did making it change the way you understood freedom and the restrictions women face?

I am glad you noticed the theme of freedom because, for me, it was one of the key themes on a human level.

While making the film, I realised how many layers restrictions can have. Some are so deeply embedded and so difficult even to recognise that overcoming them can sometimes seem utopian.

But if we are talking about empowerment, then yes, absolutely. And women expand these possibilities for themselves.

I think every one of the 100 girls I interviewed, and each of the 15 who eventually appeared in the film, helped create a safe space through her story and her willingness to share her vulnerability – a safe space for all of us within those 98 minutes.

It is a space that women throughout Kazakhstan can enter.

That is why I am trying so hard to secure a wide release for the film in Kazakhstan. I want every Kazakhstani woman to be able to see it. Its distribution title is Qyz Republic.

The film deals with difficult experiences, including violence, but the women are never reduced to victims. Was challenging stereotypical representations of women something you consciously set out to do?

I did not explicitly set out to move away from stereotypical representations of women. I had a different objective: to make female agency visible.

That sounds slightly paradoxical, but there is a need for it.

Above all, I wanted my girls to feel strong.

I think both men and women can connect with that experience. But for girls in particular, the film creates a place where they can recognise themselves, feel seen and feel strong – where they can see themselves as capable of preserving their dignity despite everything.

The culmination of this, of course, comes in the final scenes involving violence. At that point, the conflict becomes completely explicit – almost black and white.

But in my view, not one of my girls looks like a victim.

The river as witness

The landscape itself seems to function almost like another character. How did you want the river and its surroundings to appear on screen?

The landscape is definitely my silent witness – the ghost of Hamlet’s father.

I always wanted the landscape cinematography to be minimalist and static, without camera movement. I wanted it to record impartially whatever was in front of it, creating what my cinematographer calls “moving photographs”.

I wanted to leave room for a transcendental experience beyond my own statement, so that each viewer could develop their own idea of the river through these landscapes.

I did not want to dramatise them or deliberately select only emotionally charged scenery. I showed the landscapes as the river passed through them, from beginning to end.

Of course, a lot had to be left out, but I think the film still gives you a sense of roughly every ten kilometres of the river’s journey.

I wanted the landscape to speak for itself.

A grandmother’s river

Your grandmother also appears in the film, although you did not originally intend for her to be part of it. How did her story enter the film?

I think I inherited my particular attentiveness to the world around me from my grandmother.

She understood the world intuitively. The war had a profound impact on her childhood – on where and how she was able to study – and eventually brought her to Kazakhstan as a little girl.

When my grandmother arrived here, she spoke only Ukrainian. She did not know Russian. I think that sharpened her perception too: she had to read reality and learn from it through observation.

I had not originally planned to include my grandmother in the film. I simply decided to speak with her by the river about our family history and her past. Then, during the editing process, I found this moment when she suddenly comes alive while remembering the river of her childhood.

My grandmother is 93. That is almost a century. Yet both the river of her childhood in Siberia and my river in Kazakhstan can overflow, flooding houses and cities.

Through my grandmother’s memory, I wanted this sense of timelessness to enter the film.

“I belong entirely to this place”

The film is multilingual, much like Kazakhstan itself. How does your own identity shape the perspective from which you portray the country?

I love the fact that the film turned out to be multilingual – just like our reality in Kazakhstan. I see that as an advantage.

But I understand that, as a Kazakhstani whose passport says “Russian”, I have my own perspective. It cannot express the general mood surrounding identity in Kazakhstan.

Speaking purely about my own feelings, I belong entirely to this place. I am deeply connected to it.

But sometimes – or often? – I feel that it is trying to push me out.

I feel that both as a Russian Kazakhstani and as a woman and filmmaker.

At the same time, there is nowhere else on Earth where I feel so needed, or where I can so easily find common ground with people.

I understand everything here. Unfortunately, I cannot accept everything.

Between documentary and visual art

River Dreams combines documentary filmmaking with dreams, metaphor, music and highly stylised imagery. Did you ever think of it as a conventional documentary?

From the beginning, I was not making a traditional documentary. For me, it was a large artistic practice that happened to come closest to documentary cinema.

Essentially, I was making visual and conceptual art.

So I did not restrict the means I could use. I looked for ways of expressing my metaphors through different images, visual registers and the editing itself.

In the end, I think the river itself dictated what its dreams should look like.

I receive very different reactions to these techniques. Some people call them outstanding. Some see them as nothing more than B-roll. Some say they are not poetic at all, while others find them endlessly poetic. Some people think they are naive.

I like the fact that they provoke an emotional response and make the imagination work. I think that is what real cinema should do.

At least, that is what cinema does to me. And I am glad my film has had that effect on other people.

Music also plays a prominent role in the film. What did you want it to contribute?

Music plays a very important role.

The film includes several compositions by a Scottish artist I like and a track by a well-known American artist. But the most important element for me is the a cappella singing.

It appears four times. I perform one short melody myself, while the others are sung by girls I met along the river. Then, at the end, there is a music video featuring the classic line-up of the group KeshYOU, which becomes a separate, meta-ironic statement for me.

I feel no affinity with the idea, familiar across the post-Soviet space, that “real cinema” should not have music.

I use music because, for me, it speaks first and foremost to our emotions. And it fits this film particularly well because the film’s structure is itself profoundly emotional.

Success abroad, censorship at home

The film has now travelled widely and received considerable international recognition. What has the response been like?

By the time we are recording this interview, the Kazakhstani premiere has already taken place and we have had three sold-out screenings.

In Kyrgyzstan, we filled a cinema at 9:30 in the morning and won the festival’s Grand Prix. The film has received an award at the Berlinale and around 30 festival invitations around the world.

Soon I will leave for a three-month tour through Europe, Africa, Asia and Latin America. The US premiere has already taken place in New York, and the Latin American premiere is coming next.

But despite all of this, I am still struggling to get the film into general release at home.

The reason is censorship.

I hope we will manage to overcome it, but as an artist I find the fact that I constantly have to fight simply humiliating.

It is still difficult for me to cope with the enormous pain of not being accepted at the state or industry level.

And yet the reaction from audiences in Kazakhstan itself seems to have been very different. How do you reconcile those two experiences?

Kazakhstan is also my audience – both women and men.

The film received an extraordinary and deeply emotional response here. I saw rivers of tears. I heard so many people open up to me after the screenings.

And my heart is torn between my love for my homeland and the searing pain of feeling that it rejects me.

I do not yet know how to resolve that contradiction.

I tried to express it in the film.

“The universe is my country”

After five years making this film and speaking to so many people along the river, how do you think about Kazakhstan’s future?

I think about the country’s future as the future of the people who live in it.

In Kazakhstan, I have met so many people who give me hope. They express their opinions openly. They value their freedom and are prepared to fight for it. They create space for others. They make the people around them happier.

But there have also been periods when I encountered many people filled with self-censorship and despair – people who seem no longer to regard their own dignity as something inviolable.

That is why thinking about the country’s future is very painful for me at the moment.

In the film, I describe a dream I had as a child. I am a baby who keeps growing and expanding until I reach the dimensions of the universe, but I never reach its boundaries.

Now I feel as though I am that baby again, and the universe is my country, Kazakhstan.

Maybe I need to go beyond its boundaries. Maybe I am already outgrowing them.

But I do not know.

My family lives here.

I love this place very deeply.

By Mathieu Lemoine, Editor-in-Chief for Novastan English.

The post “River Dreams”: A river, 100 women and a portrait of Kazakhstan appeared first on Novastan English.

In August-September 2026, the annual Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit took place in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan. Initially conceived as a platform for regional security cooperation, the organization used its 2026 summit to reiterate demands for a multipolar international order through appeals to Eurasian connectivity. State-overseen media in some of the organization’s authoritarian member states repeatedly invoked euphemistic terms such as “Silk Road” and “Digital Silk Road” alongside declarations of multipolarity. These references accompanied efforts by regional powers, particularly China and Russia, to secure recognition as global powers and challenge the predominance the United States has exercised since the end of the Cold War. For the post-Soviet states of Central Asia and the South Caucasus, embracing the Silk Road paradigm presents a particular dilemma, as they seek greater international recognition through a framework that designates them primarily as intermediaries between larger powers.

Read more on Novastan: In Central Asia, China is taking advantage of Russia’s isolation at war

The Making of the Silk Road Paradigm

 Since the early 2010s, the Silk Road has become a pervasive framework for representing Central Asia and the South Caucasus in tourism, scholarship, current affairs, and policy analysis. Many hotels and travel agencies in these regions bear the name or feature imagery of camels and caravans, while international tour operators market visits to these countries as Silk Road journeys. Conferences and institutional associations, including the Tbilisi Silk Road Forum and the Silk Road Universities Network, adopt the same designation. American academic institutions have also embraced it, most notably the Silk Road Studies Program formerly affiliated with Johns Hopkins University and Indiana University’s incipient Silk Road Studies program.

Uyghur and Uzbek restaurants across Western Europe and North America operate under names such as “Silk Road” and “Caravan.” The Chinese-American cello virtuoso Yo-Yo Ma applied the same paradigm to musical performance through his Silk Road project, conceived in 1998. Its eclectic ensemble reduces the rich musical traditions of various Eurasian nations to one or two representative performers, prioritizing national representation over demonstrating genuine historical musical connections across Eurasia. In a 2021 video from Tashkent, Uzbekistan, the popular Emirati food blogger Khalid al-Ameri gleefully attributes the enormous portions of Tashkent-style pilaf (to’y oshi) to the appetites of merchants traversing the Silk Road, as if local culinary traditions existed chiefly to serve transient traders.

    The Silk Road paradigm was popularized in the former Soviet space during late perestroika, almost a quarter-century before China launched the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) in 2013, as  late Soviet and early post-Soviet publications attest. UNESCO provided institutional endorsement by launching a research program dedicated to the “Silk Roads” in 1988. In 1994, the Samarkand Declaration on Silk Road Tourism established a framework for international cooperation to promote the region’s historical routes and cultural heritage. Four years later, Baku hosted a conference on the restoration of the historic Silk Road under the EU’s auspices. The United States adopted the designation for its own New Silk Road initiative in 2011. Uzbekistan’s 2009 postage stamps promoted the theme, followed by subsequent issues depicting mapped routes, camels, caravans, and other popular Silk Road imagery. Russia also issued a Silk Road commemorative coin honoring the Eurasian Economic Community. The tourism expansion across post-Soviet Eurasia in the 2010s further encouraged Silk Road branding. For the newly independent states of Central Asia and the South Caucasus, the paradigm offered a means of asserting historical identities and international significance after the Soviet collapse amid the limitations of established Western regional classifications, as Central Asia and the South Caucasus fitted awkwardly within conventional definitions of the Middle East, Eastern Europe, or South Asia.

    Scholarship and popular historical writing in the English-speaking world have helped popularize the Silk Road as a framework for interpreting Central and Inner Eurasia. Valerie Hansen and Susan Whitfield have made substantial contributions to the study of underexplored communities and cultural encounters through works organized around this designation. Christopher Beckwith’s monograph applies the term to a broad history of Central Eurasia while emphasizing the historical agency of the region’s vernacular communities. Peter Frankopan adopts the pluralized Silk Roads for an expansive Eurasian synthesis for a general readership. In their accounts of premodern Eurasia, these authors organize historical interpretation around a designation that did not exist during the periods under examination. Maps of the Silk Road and its supposed branches, now ubiquitous in tourist promotions and geopolitical analysis, further reinforce the impression that the term describes a coherent framework. References to the Silk Road also supply historical context in prominent Anglophone media outlets’ reporting on the dire human rights situation of the Uyghurs.

    The Silk Road paradigm often entails a teleological interpretation of Eurasian history by projecting the modern concept of globalization onto premodern exchanges. Conventional accounts describe a network of routes linking China with Europe and the Eastern Mediterranean from the period when the Han and Roman empires coexisted to the mid- or late fifteenth century, before the Age of Discoveries fundamentally reshaped global connections. Replacing a single road with a plurality of routes leaves largely intact the presumption that these exchanges constituted a coherent and enduring trans-Eurasian system. The term itself was a nineteenth-century coinage, appearing in Carl Ritter’s work in 1838 before the German geographer Ferdinand von Richthofen gave it greater scholarly prominence in 1877. The existence of exchanges between distant regions does not establish that the people involved shared a conception of a unified system joining Eurasia’s eastern and western extremities. Treating their activities as successive stages of globalization risks attributing a common direction to interactions shaped by distinct local circumstances and changing sociopolitical realities. The conventional fifteenth-century endpoint similarly obscures the continuation of overland exchange across the Eurasian landmass into the modern period.

    The Silk Road has also acquired a geographical scope that encompasses entire regions of Central and Inner Eurasia. In this usage, Central Asia, Iran, the Caucasus, Anatolia, and Mesopotamia fall under a common designation derived from their association with routes connecting China with Europe. The term consequently covers the political, social, religious, and cultural histories of these territories, including developments whose significance extends well beyond commercial or cultural transmission. This usage conflates the history of connections among regions with the histories of the regions themselves. Establishing that a society participated in a network of exchange provides limited justification for treating that network as the principal framework for interpreting its historical development.

Between China and Europe

    The Silk Road paradigm presents China and Europe as the principal cultural and commercial centers of premodern Eurasia, relegating the intervening lands and peoples to an intermediary position within a linear rather than territorial conception of space. This hierarchy obscures the development of local political institutions and intellectual traditions, assigning historical importance primarily according to a society’s contribution to exchanges between the two endpoints.

The mathematical scholarship of al-Khwarazmi, the philosophical and medical writings of Avicenna, the musical theories of al-Farabi, the astronomical discoveries of al-Biruni, the linguistic and ethnographic works of Mahmud al-Kashgari, and the poetry of Ferdowsi, Rumi, Omar Khayyam, Ahmad Yasawi, Yusuf Balasaguni, and Ali-Shir Nawa’i exemplify contributions whose significance exceeds the transmission of ideas between distant centers and deserves consideration in its own right. Even when exchange remains the principal subject of inquiry, emphasizing these two endpoints understates India’s importance. During the Roman period, Mediterranean commerce with India, often through Central Asia, was considerably more voluminous than commerce with China. The Seleucid Empire and the Greco-Bactrian and Indo-Greek kingdoms had sustained earlier political and cultural connections, whose Hellenistic legacies persisted beyond their rule.

    The Silk Road paradigm’s Sino-centrism and Euro-centrism often obscure the cultural agency of vernacular communities in Central Eurasia. Communities selectively adapted and appropriated cultural imports, changing their forms and significance before they circulated further. Scholars such as al-Khwarazmi elaborated the Indian system underlying Arabic numerals before it reached Europe. Chess acquired new rules, pieces, and social meanings as it spread from India through Persia and onward to Europe, with “checkmate” being a Persian loan. Christian communities adapted Syriac script to write Sogdian and Old Uyghur. Regional variants of instruments such as the zurna, qanun, and kamancha differ in construction and performance practice, reflecting the musical traditions and preferences of the communities that developed them. Regional preparations of noodles (laghman, lamian), dumplings (chuchvara, manti), fried dough (çäkçäk, tush, sachima), and fruit leathers (lavashak, guodanpi) also require attention to local specificities.

Exchange Beyond Trade

The Silk Road paradigm’s emphasis on commerce often obscures the role of conquest, pastoral mobility, and permanent migration in facilitating cultural exchange across Eurasia. Scythian expansions and the Arab, Mongol, and Timurid conquests intensified cultural contacts through military service, imperial rule, and population displacement, frequently under conditions of extreme violence. Timur’s deportation of artisans from conquered cities to Samarkand made forced migration a major source of the Timurid capital’s architectural and artistic achievements. Similar developments followed Shah Abbas I’s deportation of Armenians from Nakhichevan to Isfahan, where churches combined Armenian and Safavid architectural characteristics. Nomadic communities sustained other forms of exchange through seasonal movement and recurrent encounters with settled populations.

Research on mountain routes through Inner Asia suggests that pastoral mobility helped establish some of the connections subsequently used by long-distance traders. The migrations of Qypchaqs, Seljuks, Kalmyks and other Oirat groups, and Alans carried military practices, oral literature, and material culture into new settings, where interactions with settled populations encouraged further adaptation. Jewish diasporic communities across Central Eurasia maintained connections through kinship, religious institutions, and scholarship, sustaining exchanges that extended beyond the activities of merchants, best exemplified by the Moroccan-born rabbi Yosef Maimon’s efforts to promote religious education and Sephardic liturgical practices among Bukharan Jewish communities in Central Asia during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Commerce itself often depended on the routes and social relationships established through these movements.

Silk Without China

The history of silk production further undermines the Silk Road paradigm’s Sino-centrism. Sericulture had spread into Central Asia and Iran well before the thirteenth century, and tenth-century geographical accounts describe silk production across much of Iran. Communities developed their own practices of silkworm breeding and textile manufacture, while Shaki and Shamakhi in modern-day northern Azerbaijan became important centers of silk production and trade in the Caucasus. Before Azerbaijan took control of the city in late 2023, one of the main streets of Stepanakert (Khankandi), the de facto capital of Armenian-controlled Nagorno-Karabakh, was called Silk Weavers’ Street (Metaqsagorts’neri poghots).

The smooth, colorful khan atlas (“royal silk”), produced most famously in the ancient city of Margilan in the Ferghana Valley, is widely regarded as a national symbol of Uzbekistan. The expansion of production diversified the sources of silk entering regional and distant markets while sustaining its commercial importance. Raw silk remained a major export of Safavid Iran in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and Iranian workshops produced luxury fabrics for domestic consumption and foreign buyers. In Shaki, wealth from silkworm breeding and cocoon sales supported urban development in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, as reflected in the magnificent summer palace of the Shaki khans. These economies depended on local agricultural conditions and commercial institutions and could sustain production and exchange without continuous input from China. The association of silk with China, therefore, provides little justification for assigning a subordinate historical role to societies that became substantial producers and exporters themselves.

From Historical Metaphor to Geopolitical Strategy

    The Silk Road paradigm’s retrospective Sino-centrism also lends historical legitimacy to the Chinese government’s contemporary geopolitical ambitions. China’s position among the largest premodern economies provides an insufficient basis for assuming comparably extensive political influence, cultural ties, or transit connections with the principal centers of Central Eurasia and beyond. The extent and character of these connections varied considerably across periods, depending on changing political arrangements and networks sustained by communities and Eurasian land empires with their own interests and institutions.

Read more on Novastan: China in Central Asia: Fact-checking and myth-busting

Official Chinese presentations of BRI invoke the pluralized historical Silk Roads to portray contemporary transit investments as the renewal of historical connections. This presumed continuity frames the expansion of Chinese interests as restoring a lost position, encouraging acceptance of Beijing’s ambitions to reshape Eurasia’s political and economic development. Central Asia and South Caucasus states embrace the same framework to attract Chinese investment, promote transit infrastructure centered around China, and secure greater international recognition. Their self-presentation as intermediaries risks making that recognition contingent on their usefulness to larger powers, while reinforcing a historical hierarchy that privileges China’s geopolitical objectives.

Read more on Novastan: China-Kyrgyzstan-Uzbekistan railway: Who wins from Central Asia’s new trade route?

Marco Polo and the Politics of Eurasian Space

    The Silk Road paradigm’s anachronistic Sino-centrism also appears in bestselling American author Robert Kaplan’s use of Marco Polo’s travels to interpret contemporary geopolitics. In The Return of Marco Polo’s World, Kaplan uses the Venetian traveler’s itinerary to explain the strategic significance of China’s expanding connections across Eurasia and the Indian Ocean. The itinerary of a single traveler offers limited grounds for establishing either the density of historical exchange or a common geopolitical orientation among the societies he encountered. Polo’s journeys depended on Mongol imperial arrangements and networks maintained by merchants, religious communities, and local authorities, whose activities served numerous purposes beyond connecting Europe with China.

Kaplan explicitly presents Kublai Khan’s empire as a guide to contemporary Chinese strategy, encouraging the interpretation of Mongol-era connections as precedents for China’s present ambitions, although Chinggisid imperial domains encompassed much of Eurasia and included political centers well beyond China. This analogy risks attributing a continuous geopolitical agenda to distinct political entities and subordinating other Eurasian societies to a narrative of Chinese resurgence. Kaplan’s advocacy of a sustained American naval presence also exposes a tension in his emphasis on Chinese centrality: American naval power helps sustain the maritime trading system on which China depends, while US military positions and alliances along the First and Second Island Chains constrain China’s pursuit of predominance in the western Pacific.

What the Eurasian Frame Leaves Out

    The Silk Road paradigm’s Eurasian frame also erases the Western Hemisphere when used to interpret contemporary global power dynamics. The United States, which emerged from the Cold War as the sole superpower, lies outside this paradigm’s geographical space. The postwar economic order still depends on financial arrangements shaped by American power, with the US dollar retaining its central role in international transactions, banking, and reserve holdings. The scale of the US economy and the global operations of US corporations sustain commercial relationships that cannot be adequately represented through routes joining China and Europe. American corporations, especially those based in Silicon Valley, occupy leading positions in the global high-technology industry. US military deployments and alliances, including a naval presence along major shipping routes, remain integral to the security arrangements within which much of this commerce occurs. Interpreting Chinese infrastructure expansion primarily through a Eurasian historical frame risks overstating China’s capacity to displace American dominance by discounting the United States’ pivotal role on the global stage.

When Influence Ran East

    The history of China’s Tang dynasty (618–907) challenges Sino-centric accounts of Eurasian exchange that portray China primarily as a source rather than a recipient of cultural influence. Conventionally celebrated as an apogee of Chinese cultural achievement, the Tang period coincided with extensive political and cultural engagement with Central Asia. The Tang capital, Chang’an (Xi’an), maintained close ties with the region, where Tang campaigns and protectorates established a substantial, though uneven, presence. Turkic soldiers and commanders contributed significantly to Tang military power, while Uyghur allies provided crucial assistance during the eighth century. Central Asian music and dances shaped Tang court entertainment, notably through Sogdian dances, while the pipa, often called the Chinese lute, developed from Middle Eastern and Central Asian prototypes. Elite men and women adopted Central Asian clothing and equestrian fashions; Crown Prince Li Chengqian dressed as a Turkic khan, established a tent camp within the palace grounds, and ate mutton cut with his sword. Sogdian communities in Chang’an and other urban centers contributed to commercial, artistic, and religious life, with manuscripts recovered from the caves of Dunhuang preserving evidence of their activities and beliefs. Imported fruit varieties, vegetables, and livestock, including peaches from Samarkand and prized Central Asian horses, further demonstrate the material significance of these contacts.

Christianity and Manichaeism reached Tang China through networks connecting Iran and Central Asia. Translations of Buddhist and Christian scriptures expanded Chinese religious literature, while Buddhist translation continued an earlier process of incorporating Sanskrit terms into Chinese. Li Bai (Li Bo), among China’s most celebrated poets, may have been born in modern-day Kyrgyzstan. Popular narratives about the battle of Talas in 751, fought between the Tang dynasty and the Abbasid Caliphate, often obscure the political agency of Central Eurasian communities by crediting the Abbasid victory with bringing Chinese westward expansion to a definitive end. The conflict emerged from regional rivalries involving Ferghana and Chach, whose ruling families sought allies to advance their own interests. Karluk forces played an important part in the Tang defeat, with Chinese accounts attributing the outcome partly to their defection to the Abbasid side. Tang expansion depended heavily on Turkic troops and commanders and alliances with Sogdian rulers. Tang garrisons remained in the Tarim Basin after Talas, while An Lushan’s rebellion in 755 and subsequent Tibetan advances led to Tang’s decline. An Lushan (Rokhshan in Sogdian), a general of Sogdian and Turkic ancestry, captured two Tang capitals and forced the emperor to flee, while the prolonged conflict severely weakened the dynasty.

Beyond the Silk Road

    Prominent historian of Central Asia Scott Levi has advocated the scholarly embrace of the Silk Road paradigm despite its conceptual laxity. However, its acceptance in Western academia would inevitably lend greater legitimacy to the expansive agenda of an authoritarian dictatorship whose repressive policies have actively destroyed the communities and cultural legacies that have long formed the backbone of Western imaginations of the Silk Road.

By Diego Benning Wang.

Diego Benning Wang is a historian of Eurasia and Eastern Europe. Having received a PhD in history from Princeton University, an MA in Russian studies from Columbia University, and a BA in Russian studies from New York University, he is currently a visiting scholar at Harvard University.

The post The Silk Road Paradigm and the Dilemma of In-Between appeared first on Novastan English.

Mongolia’s position between Russia and China is often portrayed as a geopolitical constraint. Researcher and writer Bolor Lkhaajav argues that Ulaanbaatar instead seeks to combine strong ties with both neighbours with an increasingly ambitious “third neighbour” policy spanning critical minerals, energy, technology, diplomacy and security.

Bolor Lkhaajav is a specialist in East and Northeast Asia who has published more than 200 articles and commentaries in multiple languages. She writes regularly on diplomatic history, foreign and security policy, geopolitics, economics, politics and society. She is currently working on Mongolia’s foreign-policy grand strategy and has been accepted to a PhD programme beginning in autumn 2027.

In this interview with Novastan, she discusses how Mongolia is navigating the geopolitical consequences of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the growing importance of South Korea and other “third neighbours”, the country’s critical-mineral potential, environmental pressures and Mongolia’s distinctive position in a rapidly changing Northeast Asia.

Novastan: You are currently working on Mongolia’s foreign-policy grand strategy. How would you describe the country’s strategic approach today, and how has it evolved in the changing geopolitical environment since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine?

Bolor Lkhaajav: In 2011, the Mongolian Parliament adopted the country’s Foreign Policy Concept, a legal document mapping out Ulaanbaatar’s foreign-policy strategy to meet modern-day demands while maintaining a balance between its two neighbours – Russia and China.

One of the important elements of the concept was the formal introduction of the “Third Neighbour” Doctrine. The idea of a “third neighbour” had long existed in Mongolian history and diplomatic circles, but it had never been explicitly defined and applied in such a transparent way. Since 2011, the policy has become one of the pillars of Mongolia’s foreign-policy grand strategy.

Read more on Novastan: “Mongolia cannot be understood through one lens”: Dr. Mendee Jargalsaikhan on democracy, China and Central Asia

It is specifically intended to strengthen Mongolia’s diplomatic, political, economic and cultural links with countries outside Russia and China, while at the same time reinforcing bilateral and trilateral engagement with Moscow and Beijing.

Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Mongolia has experienced the consequences of Russia prioritising its domestic energy supply. Given Mongolia’s heavy dependence on Russian fuel, intermittent shortages have become a regular occurrence over the past six months. This also highlights why it is crucial for Mongolia to invest in renewable energy and work with third-neighbour partners to strengthen the country’s energy sector. I would not say that Mongolia can achieve energy independence at present, because that is simply not realistic.

Russia’s war in Ukraine has also changed the geopolitical and security dynamics of Northeast Asia. For Mongolia’s foreign-policy grand strategy, it is crucial that its only two neighbours remain free of conflict.

Mongolia’s grand strategy seeks to position Ulaanbaatar as a stable, democratic actor on the world stage. It is not dependent on the foreign policies of its neighbours, or of any other country, nor on their global engagements. Mongolia may respond differently to external challenges, but these will not fundamentally alter the country’s foreign-policy grand strategy.

Mongolia’s “third neighbour” policy has been central to its diplomacy for decades. Which relationships do you think have the greatest potential to deepen in the coming years – whether with South Korea, Japan, India, the European Union, the United States or others – and why?

Mongolia’s “Third Neighbour” Doctrine provides a much broader framework that envisages mechanisms for cooperation across different sectors and stages of development. It is not restricted to the mining sector.

At its core, the Third Neighbour Doctrine is both a concept and a foreign-policy practice encompassing multiple mechanisms that support Mongolia’s geopolitical balance between the two major powers surrounding it, Russia and China, while also placing an emphasis on reinvigorating the country’s bilateral and multilateral engagements outside their respective spheres of influence.

Within the region, relations between Mongolia and South Korea have certainly expanded tremendously. This is partly because of South Korea’s successful commercial presence in Mongolia and its more recent interest in diversifying its critical-mineral supply chains. Japan’s interest and investment follow, although not to the same extent as South Korea’s.

European partners will continue to play a crucial role in Mongolia’s democracy and development. Building on strong bilateral relations with European partners, Ulaanbaatar aims to increase cooperation on climate change, renewable energy and sectors that align both with Mongolia’s development priorities and with European standards and regulations.

Read more on Novastan: “Heritage is something alive”: Ganzorig Miimaa reimagines Mongolia through photography

With the United States, however, environmental and renewable-energy cooperation is unlikely to be a central focus under Donald Trump’s administration. In many respects, the current administration’s priorities do not align with Mongolia’s core values at present.

The US has shown interest in Mongolia’s critical minerals. However, given Washington’s posture towards both Moscow and Beijing, Ulaanbaatar is not particularly confident about the prospects of concluding a major deal.

One of the largest US contributions to Mongolia to date has been the successful implementation and launch of the Water Compact funded by the US Millennium Challenge Corporation.

You have written extensively on Mongolia’s relationship with South Korea, as well as on India and the European Union. How far can these partnerships help Mongolia translate diplomatic diversification into real economic diversification, given the constraints of geography, infrastructure and export routes?

Mongolia’s partnerships with South Korea, India, the European Union and others vary considerably according to the kinds of investment each partner is interested in pursuing. These are not all equivalent partners, and each can offer something different.

For example, India’s $1.7 billion soft loan for Mongolia’s first major greenfield oil refinery is a major boost for the country’s domestic supply and also has potential for exports.

The EU, on the other hand, is more interested in investing in human capital and civil society, promoting democratic values, and supporting the green transition, forestry and governance. Mongolia has a great deal to gain from its relations with the EU.

For example, the Mongolian government can learn from the EU’s Artificial Intelligence Act as the country moves towards establishing data centres and becoming a more digital nation. These ambitions will in turn create a need for greater cybersecurity capabilities, which countries such as South Korea, India and the United States can provide.

The logistical challenge involved in exporting Mongolian goods is obvious, and there are no magical solutions. All exports ultimately need to transit through Russia or China.

It is therefore strategically important for Mongolia to maintain the strongest and most stable possible bilateral and trilateral relations with both neighbours. Mongolia-China railway connections, as well as Mongolia-Russia transit corridors, are equally important for expanding Mongolian exports to Europe and elsewhere in the world.

Critical minerals and uranium are attracting growing international attention to Mongolia. What opportunities does this create, and what would Mongolia need to do to turn this interest into durable economic and strategic benefits?

Mongolia’s exploration and export of critical minerals and uranium form part of the country’s diversification strategy, even though they remain within the mining sector.

Mongolia holds an estimated $1-3 trillion in untapped mineral reserves, including significant deposits of copper, fluorspar, coal and rare earth elements.

South Korea is already working on building a stable supply chain to support its technological development. During South Korean President Lee Jae-myung’s state visit to Mongolia in July, Ulaanbaatar and Seoul signed a Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA), which included the elimination of 2-5 percent tariffs on critical minerals.

In 2025, a South Korean critical-minerals research hub was established in Ulaanbaatar. This was recently followed by the launch of joint scientific research between the Mongolian National Rare Earth Corporation and the Korea Basic Science Institute.

Read more on Novastan: What lies beneath Central Asia? Rare earths, critical minerals and the new race for resources

Given South Korea’s advanced manufacturing industries, including steel, automobiles and semiconductors, the country has considerable demand for high-purity molybdenum powder. Moreover, South Korea’s growing interest in becoming more active in the defence industry and manufacturing makes Mongolia’s natural resources a strategic asset.

France has also become the first European country to seal a major uranium deal, signing a $1.6 billion investment agreement in 2025. These interests can be mutually beneficial: France requires uranium for its nuclear-energy sector, while Mongolia can use the partnership to diversify its exports.

For Mongolia to continue attracting investment from global partners, however, the country’s political system needs to be stable.

More than anything else, I think the constant changes of government, government plans and budgets, changes to the taxation system, and corruption are among the main obstacles to Mongolia’s development.

Mongolia recently hosted UNCCD COP17 in Ulaanbaatar, a subject you have also written about. Beyond the diplomatic visibility of hosting a major UN conference, what could COP17 realistically mean for Mongolia in areas such as desertification, land restoration, water security and environmental finance?

This year’s COP17 included discussions on finance, water, land and people, and food systems. Each of these issues has direct implications for Mongolia.

Water security, water pollution and land restoration in particular are closely linked to major mining operations in the country. Over the years, we have come to understand that environmental-protection clauses must be included as part of responsible mining. These requirements are understandably costly, but they are something the Mongolian side needs to demand regardless.

Read more on Novastan: From the Pamirs to the Aral Sea: Following the Amu Darya Through Central Asia

During COP17, mining giants such as Rio Tinto announced strategies to contribute to Mongolia’s fight against desertification and water pollution and to restore forests, including planting 5,000 hectares of forest, investing in renewable energy for company use and introducing new technologies to replenish groundwater.

Oyu Tolgoi, one of Mongolia’s largest mining operations, began paying water-pollution fees in 2026, with regular quarterly payments of 150-200 million Mongolian tugrik, or roughly $42,000-$55,000. These practices are intended to set an example for other major mining companies operating in the country.

Water security and water pollution will become even more important issues in the coming years as the construction of data centres is already being discussed at government level.

Their environmental impact needs to be studied thoroughly, and Parliament will need to develop appropriate legal and regulatory mechanisms for such projects.

You have also written about the changing geopolitical environment in Northeast Asia. What new opportunities or challenges does this create for Mongolia, particularly as relations among Russia, China, North Korea, South Korea and Japan continue to evolve?

Over the last five years, Northeast Asia has become a hotspot of geopolitical transformation, and recent events have only highlighted these shifts in the post-Second World War international order.

These are dynamic and complex international-relations issues, but I will mention the most significant ones here.

Russia’s war in Ukraine created tremendous opportunities for North Korea. Pyongyang is moving towards becoming a de facto nuclear state, most likely with the backing of both Russia and China.

For Mongolia, regional peace and security are crucial, and this includes peace on the Korean Peninsula. Mongolia currently maintains, and will continue to maintain, open diplomatic channels with North Korea regardless of Pyongyang’s actions. There are also some economic incentives for doing so.

Despite Mongolia’s landlocked position in Northeast Asia, one of its geopolitical advantages is that it is the only country in the region without territorial disputes or unresolved historical grievances with neighbouring states. This is a significant advantage for Mongolian diplomacy and creates opportunities for Ulaanbaatar to develop diverse political, economic and cultural engagements.

In the short to long term, Mongolia’s economic engagement with all regional actors is likely to continue.

Moreover, in order to diversify its energy sources – a need that has become more pressing because of the consequences of Russia’s war in Ukraine and fuel shortages – Mongolia will require support from China as well as third-neighbour investment in the energy sector.

India is currently supporting Mongolia’s first greenfield oil refinery, which is expected to become operational in 2028.

Finally, what aspect of Mongolia’s international position do you think remains most misunderstood outside the country, and looking five to ten years ahead, what would successful diversification actually look like for Mongolia?

I think one of the main misconceptions among observers of Mongolia is the idea that the country somehow has to choose between Russia and China.

Mongolia’s histories with Russia and China differ, and its diplomatic and economic relations with the two countries also differ tremendously. To think that Ulaanbaatar needs to choose between Russia and China in modern-day diplomacy is therefore not only a misconception, but also something that simply does not apply to Mongolian foreign policy.

The second misconception is that, because of Mongolia’s landlocked position between Russia and China, the third-neighbour policy is unsuccessful.

I have come across views that undermine Ulaanbaatar’s third-neighbour approach, arguing that the policy cannot genuinely counterbalance Russian and Chinese influence. But the misconception lies in assuming that this is what the policy is designed to do.

Mongolia needs robust relations with Russia and China. That is itself a foreign-policy priority. The Third Neighbour Doctrine is an addition to strong relations with Mongolia’s only two neighbours, not an alternative to them.

From both a foreign-policy and implementation perspective, since 2011 – over a period of 15 years – Mongolia’s third-neighbour relationships have flourished and will continue to develop through niche partnerships and new mechanisms for cooperation.

If one looks at the impact of Mongolia’s third-neighbour policy in its entirety, it becomes clear that it is not limited to economic diversification. It also encompasses culture, education, technology, innovation, modernisation and everything else that a modern society demands.

If there is one thing slowing Mongolia’s third-neighbour engagement, it is the country’s political instability, constant changes of government, shifts in investment laws and regulations, and, finally, corruption.

By Mathieu Lemoine, Editor-in-Chief for Novastan English.

The post Bolor Lkhaajav: “Mongolia does not need to choose between Russia and China” appeared first on Novastan English.

Why Soviet borders do not make Central Asian statehood artificial

In January 2026, Russian state television commentator Vladimir Solovyov did what a small but persistent chorus of Russian nationalists has done regularly since the invasion of Ukraine: he described Central Asia as part of a natural Russian sphere of power and suggested that Moscow could extend its military operations there if it judged this necessary. The remark prompted a sharp response from Uzbek politician Alisher Qodirov, who dismissed it as propaganda and stressed that the states of Central Asia are sovereign and capable of defending their interests. The exchange was brief, but the argument behind it is familiar. Russian nationalist commentators periodically suggest that Central Asian sovereignty is somehow contingent – an accidental product of Soviet administrative borders rather than the outcome of a deeper political history. Western coverage often treats such statements primarily as geopolitics: another expression of Russia’s post-imperial anxiety or its competition with China for influence in the region. Recent analysis of Russian-Central Asian relations has documented the growing frequency of such irredentist rhetoric. That interpretation is not wrong, but underneath it lies a historical claim that deserves to be addressed on its own terms. The idea that Moscow simply “invented” the nations of Central Asia is misleading.

Soviet rule profoundly reshaped Central Asian nationhood. It territorialised identities, codified languages, built national institutions and created republics whose borders later became international frontiers. But that is very different from saying that Central Asian political identities appeared out of nothing in 1924. The process drew on pre-existing communities, political movements, religious institutions and local elites, and it was negotiated, appropriated and contested by Central Asians themselves. Modern Central Asian nations are therefore neither timeless entities that survived unchanged from antiquity nor arbitrary creations handed down fully formed by Moscow. They emerged from a much longer interaction between local political life, Russian imperial rule, indigenous reform movements and Soviet nationality policy.

Political life before the Bolsheviks

Central Asian nationhood cannot be understood by starting the clock in either 1917 or 1924. Pre-Soviet Turkestan was not an empty political space waiting for Bolshevik ethnographers to give it shape, although it would be equally anachronistic to imagine that the region already possessed mass national movements corresponding neatly to today’s five republics. Society was overwhelmingly rural, literacy remained limited, and modern political ideas about nationhood circulated mainly among relatively small urban and educated circles. Adeeb Khalid’s study of Jadidism and colonial society provides the key background for this pre-revolutionary political and intellectual landscape. Russian imperial rule had also transformed the region’s social and political structure well before the Bolshevik Revolution, particularly through settler colonisation, the creation of new administrative centres and the expansion of a Russian-speaking bureaucracy whose influence was disproportionate to the size of the settler population in many parts of the region.

The empire restricted indigenous participation in imperial politics while preserving a degree of local administration. At village and volost level, Muslim communities could manage taxation, minor judicial disputes and communal affairs, but their authority remained subordinate to Russian officials. Elections could be annulled, administrative decisions required approval, and Muslim political participation was constrained by the colonial state’s suspicion of wider political mobilisation. This system was therefore neither simple exclusion nor meaningful self-government. Russian rule combined political marginalisation with the selective preservation of indigenous elites deemed useful or reliable. The Emirate of Bukhara, for example, survived as a nominally sovereign protectorate under Russian domination, retaining its court, treasury and Islamic establishment. The Khanate of Khiva remained under a similar arrangement, while Kokand, regarded as less manageable and more threatening to imperial control, was annexed outright in 1876. Local political authority thus survived, but in fragmented and highly constrained forms determined by the priorities of empire.

Read more on Novastan: Bukhara Before the Border: Aini and the Politics of Tajik-Uzbek Memory

By the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, one of the most important new expressions of indigenous reform was Jadidism. The Jadids – their name derived from the usul-i jadid, or “new method”, of education – were Muslim modernists who founded schools, newspapers and theatres and sought to reform education, religious life and society in cities including Tashkent, Samarkand and Bukhara. Education stood at the centre of their programme. Some Jadid reformers advocated or experimented with education for girls well before the Soviet state later presented women’s emancipation as one of the defining achievements of socialist modernisation. Khalid’s work remains a foundational source on Jadid reform, education and indigenous intellectual life. This does not make the Jadids straightforward proto-nationalists in the modern sense, nor were they politically unified. But it matters because it demonstrates that debates over reform, identity and political authority already existed before Soviet power consolidated itself across the region.

The Jadids were not the only indigenous source of authority. The ulama – Muslim scholars, judges and teachers – represented another deeply rooted social and religious establishment. Some opposed Jadid reform, while others adapted to the changing political environment after 1917. Their authority was neither uniform nor uncontested, but it long predated the Bolsheviks and remained socially significant across much of Turkestan. A 2024 study of the Tashkent Ulama society documents how religious scholars organised politically during the revolutionary opening of 1917. By the time Soviet leaders began reorganising Central Asia, they were therefore not working on an empty political map. They were intervening in a region where multiple forms of authority, identity and reform were already competing, and where Muslim intellectuals, religious figures and local elites had their own ideas about how political life should develop.

What Moscow actually did in 1924

The decisive Soviet intervention came with the national-territorial delimitation of Central Asia beginning in 1924. The process reorganised the former territories of Russian Turkestan, the Bukharan People’s Soviet Republic and the Khorezm People’s Soviet Republic into new territorial units associated with particular nationalities. Yet the familiar image of Moscow drawing five modern states in a single bureaucratic exercise is misleading. The Uzbek and Turkmen Soviet Socialist Republics emerged in 1924, but Tajikistan initially became an autonomous republic within the Uzbek SSR before becoming a union republic in 1929. Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan followed different territorial and constitutional trajectories, with their status continuing to evolve during the following decade. The map that ultimately became contemporary Central Asia was therefore produced through a process of repeated administrative and political decisions rather than one act of Soviet cartography.

Historian Francine Hirsch has shown that Soviet nationality policy was rooted in a particular Marxist understanding of historical development. Bolshevik officials believed societies moved through identifiable stages and that nationhood itself could be a necessary phase on the path towards socialism. This gave ethnography, census-taking and classification enormous political significance. Soviet experts attempted to identify populations, languages and national categories and then give them institutional and territorial form. The process was not simply descriptive: by deciding which languages would be codified, which categories would appear in censuses and which populations would become titular nationalities of republics, the Soviet state helped create the administrative reality it claimed merely to be recording.

Arne Haugen and other historians have placed greater emphasis on the political context in which delimitation occurred. Soviet leaders were wary of broader Turkestani, Muslim or Turkic political projects that might provide an alternative focus of mobilisation to Moscow, particularly after years of armed resistance and instability. The resulting territorial divisions therefore served both ideological and political purposes. But neither interpretation supports the simplistic idea that Central Asian nations were arbitrary inventions imposed on passive populations. Local elites participated extensively in delimitation debates, arguing over borders, cities, linguistic communities, economic resources and the status of particular populations. Their influence was constrained by Soviet power, and Moscow retained ultimate authority, but the process was not simply one of Russian cartographers drawing lines across a blank map.

This distinction matters because the argument that Soviet borders were politically constructed is true but insufficient. Nearly every modern state is the product of political construction, conflict and institutionalisation. The relevant question is not whether Soviet authorities drew borders but how those borders acquired political meaning and why they proved durable. Territorial delimitation nationalised space, but it did not by itself create fully formed nations. That required decades of institutional work carried out within the new republics themselves.

Nation-building was not a one-way process

Creating republics was only the beginning. Languages had to be standardised, alphabets repeatedly reformed, schools and publishing systems expanded, universities and academies established, literary canons assembled and histories written. New bureaucracies had to be staffed and new political elites trained. A central element of this process was korenizatsiya, or indigenisation, through which Soviet authorities sought during the 1920s to increase the presence of local nationalities in party structures, courts, ministries and other institutions. The policy was intended to make Soviet rule more legitimate and effective, but it also created cadres whose political careers, institutional interests and cultural projects became increasingly tied to the republics themselves.

Read more on Novastan: “Islands of Soviet power on the steppes”

Faizulla Khodjaev illustrates the complexity of this process. Born into a wealthy Bukharan family and active in the Young Bukharan movement before the consolidation of Soviet rule, he became one of the leading political figures of Soviet Uzbekistan. His career shows how pre-Soviet reformist politics could be absorbed into the institutions of the new republic. Similar processes occurred across the region as local teachers, writers, administrators and intellectuals entered Soviet structures and helped determine what Uzbek, Kazakh, Kyrgyz, Tajik or Turkmen national culture would mean in practice. Their room for manoeuvre was never unlimited, but they were not merely passive executors of instructions produced in Moscow.

Soviet nation-building in Central Asia was therefore neither a unilateral imposition from the centre nor a freely chosen indigenous project. It is better understood as a process of co-production under profoundly unequal conditions. Soviet institutions provided the territorial framework, controlled the political boundaries within which nation-building could occur and possessed the coercive power to decide which political projects were permissible. Central Asian intellectuals, teachers, bureaucrats and political cadres nevertheless played indispensable roles in giving those institutions substance. The Soviet state did not merely classify nationalities; it also created institutional spaces in which local actors could standardise languages, construct national histories, develop cultural institutions and train republican elites whose interests increasingly became inseparable from the republics themselves.

This is why saying that Soviet rule shaped modern Central Asian nationhood is historically accurate, while saying that Russia “created” Central Asian nations and therefore somehow owns them is not. The institutions were Soviet, but Soviet was not synonymous with Russian. The Union itself depended on tens of thousands of Central Asian officials, writers, teachers and administrators who transformed republican institutions from bureaucratic categories into lived political and cultural structures.

The contradiction at the heart of Soviet nation-building

The same Soviet system that promoted national institutions also destroyed many of the people who had helped build them. This contradiction is essential to understanding the period and prevents the story from becoming either a celebration of Soviet modernisation or a simple narrative of national emancipation. The hujum, launched in the late 1920s, sought to transform women’s lives through a state-directed campaign against veiling and seclusion. The policy was presented as emancipation, but it also turned women’s bodies into symbols of a wider struggle over modernity, religion and political authority. The backlash was frequently violent, and women who unveiled could become targets of intimidation or murder. Soviet social transformation could therefore simultaneously expand certain forms of opportunity and impose them through profoundly coercive means.

A decade later, the Great Terror devastated the intellectual and political elites of the region. Many Jadids, former reformers and local Soviet cadres who had participated in building national schools, administrations and cultural institutions were arrested, purged or executed. Faizulla Khodjaev himself was executed in 1938. Adeeb Khalid’s work on Uzbekistan captures this contradiction particularly well: Soviet national institutions were built in part by a generation that the Soviet state later decimated. The system had encouraged local intellectuals to construct republican cultures, only to accuse many of those same intellectuals of nationalism once the political environment changed.

The republics, however, survived the people who had helped construct them. That fact complicates both Soviet triumphalism and the idea that the institutions of Central Asian nationhood were merely artificial shells. A school system remains a political reality even after its founders are purged; a standardised language continues to shape generations after the intellectuals who codified it have disappeared. By the middle of the twentieth century, the republics had become institutional ecosystems with ministries, universities, artistic establishments, party hierarchies and administrative borders that organised the lives of millions of people.

The republics outlived the Soviet Union

The political significance of those institutions became unmistakable in 1991. Central Asian republics did not generally campaign for independence with the intensity seen in the Baltic states, Georgia or parts of Ukraine. Kazakhstan was the last Soviet republic to declare independence, in December 1991, and its population had earlier voted overwhelmingly in favour of preserving a reformed union. Yet when the Soviet Union disappeared, the Central Asian republics did not dissolve into one another, and they did not surrender their sovereignty back to Moscow. Instead, each inherited national administrations, education systems, territorial borders, political elites and institutional cultures that had developed over decades. Their post-Soviet governments then reworked these inheritances to construct national narratives of their own.

This does not mean that Russian influence disappeared with the Soviet flag. Economic dependence, labour migration, Russian-language media, security arrangements and institutional ties kept several Central Asian states closely connected to Moscow for decades after 1991. Russia remained particularly important to Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, while millions of Central Asian citizens continued to live and work in the Russian Federation. Political elites often maintained strong personal and institutional links with Moscow, and Russian remained an important language of administration, education and regional communication. The post-Soviet story was therefore not one of clean geopolitical separation.

But influence is not the same thing as ownership. The states of Central Asia continued to function as distinct political units because the republics created in the Soviet period had become much more than temporary administrative conveniences. Their borders structured economic life and political careers; their education systems created national publics; their cultural institutions produced literature, historical narratives and symbols that people increasingly understood as Uzbek, Kazakh, Kyrgyz, Tajik or Turkmen. Post-Soviet elites had every incentive to strengthen these identities, because their own legitimacy depended on the continued existence of the states they governed. They did not need to invent national institutions from scratch. Much of the infrastructure of statehood was already there.

Why the argument matters today

This is where the historical debate becomes contemporary geopolitics. When Russian commentators describe Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan or other post-Soviet states as “gifts” from Russia, they rely on a particular reading of history: Soviet borders were bestowed by Moscow, and states created through those borders therefore possess less historical legitimacy than Russia itself. The implication is that sovereignty may be conditional, particularly when it conflicts with what Moscow defines as its historical sphere of interest. Recent FPRI analysis documents how this kind of irredentist rhetoric has increasingly targeted Central Asian states. That rhetoric echoes a broader revisionist understanding of the post-Soviet space in which Russia appears as the principal historical subject while its neighbours are reduced to administrative products of Soviet decision-making.

The war against Ukraine has made the political implications of such arguments impossible to dismiss. This does not mean that every provocative statement by a Russian television commentator signals imminent territorial ambition in Central Asia, and treating every rhetorical outburst as evidence of an approaching invasion would itself distort the political situation. But rhetoric matters because it helps normalise a hierarchy of sovereignty. Once some states are described as historically authentic while others are treated as accidental creations, territorial integrity becomes easier to present as negotiable.

Read more on Novastan: The Lexicon of Kazakh Decolonisation

Central Asian responses increasingly reject that hierarchy. Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and other states have diversified diplomatic, economic and security partnerships, expanded ties with China, Turkey, the European Union and Gulf states, and strengthened cooperation with one another. These policies are not necessarily anti-Russian. In many cases, governments continue to seek workable relations with Moscow while simultaneously reducing excessive dependence on it. What has changed is the growing willingness to articulate sovereignty as something inherent rather than something granted by participation in a Russian-led political space.

The history of Soviet nation-building helps explain that confidence. Modern Central Asian statehood was profoundly transformed by Soviet rule, and the republics, borders and institutions of the twentieth century remain central to the countries that exist today. But the region was not politically empty before the Bolsheviks arrived, and nation-building after 1924 was not carried out by Russians alone. It involved Muslim reformers, religious authorities, intellectuals, teachers, bureaucrats and political cadres from Central Asia itself – people who adapted to Soviet institutions, shaped them, resisted them and, in many cases, were eventually destroyed by them.

The historical reality is therefore more complicated than either nationalist myth allows. Moscow did not simply invent Central Asia, but neither did Soviet rule merely impose artificial borders on fully formed ancient nations. Modern Central Asian nationhood emerged from the interaction between older identities, imperial rule, indigenous reform movements, Soviet nationality policy and decades of local institution-building. The states that survived the Soviet Union are products of that history. That does not make their sovereignty artificial. It makes it historical.

By Shakhzoda Khusankhodjaeva. Shakhzoda is a researcher focused on conflict, gender, and regional politics, with a particular interest in Soviet and post-Soviet Central Asia.

The post Who Made the Nations of Central Asia? appeared first on Novastan English.

Kazakhstani feminist and LGBTI rights activist Zhanar Sekerbayeva was convicted of battery after a confrontation in Astana in November 2025. She says the prosecution was retaliation for her activism and part of a wider deterioration in the rights of LGBTI people in Kazakhstan.

“They said to me, ‘It will be hooliganism. Don’t worry, Zhanar. We just want to get rid of you,’” says Zhanar Sekerbayeva, a Kazakhstani feminist and LGBTI rights activist, and co-founder of the feminist initiative Feminita.

She was describing to Amnesty International what police officers allegedly told her after she and fellow LGBTI rights activists were harassed at a café in Astana in November 2025.

What Sekerbayeva initially understood would be treated as an administrative case instead became a criminal prosecution against her.

“Somebody decided it would not be an administrative offence, but a criminal one, because I think it was some kind of last opportunity for them before the amendments [to the so-called LGBTI propaganda law] came into force,” she says. “They needed a public lesson, a public lesson to everybody.”

On 22 April 2026, a criminal court in Astana found Sekerbayeva guilty under Article 109-1, Part 1 of Kazakhstan’s Criminal Code of “battery or other violent acts causing physical pain but not causing minor injury to health”.

She was fined around 178,000 Kazakhstani tenge, approximately US$380.

From harassment to prosecution

On 22 November 2025, Sekerbayeva and several friends and fellow activists gathered for a private lunch on the second floor of a café in Astana.

For security reasons, the venue’s exact address had been withheld publicly and shared only in private messages with trusted guests.

Yet a woman who had disrupted an expert roundtable on gender issues organised by the Education Community in Astana the previous day found the group there. Accompanied by several unidentified people, she began filming those present without their consent and loudly accused them of spreading “LGBT propaganda”.

When Sekerbayeva and her companions tried to leave, the woman blocked the staircase. After they eventually reached the exit, she obstructed their path again. Witnesses, including diners at nearby tables, later described how the woman physically prevented the group from leaving.

Sekerbayeva had previously survived two violent attacks in Shymkent and Qaragandy in 2021. She says the Astana confrontation left her in severe shock.

But it was Sekerbayeva, rather than the woman who had confronted the group, whom police subsequently pursued.

According to Sekerbayeva, officers followed her from one café to another and then to a shop, where she locked herself in a restroom. She says officers threatened to break down the door.

Sekerbayeva and her colleague Temirlan Baimash were eventually taken to a police station and held for around three hours before being released without formal charges.

Three days later, Sekerbayeva filed a written complaint describing the incident as unlawful stalking.

Police opened a preliminary inquiry but closed it only a few days later, characterising what had happened as no more than a “verbal conflict” that had caused no “substantial harm”.

A second complaint filed by Sekerbayeva on 12 February 2026 was rejected on similar grounds.

By contrast, a complaint against Sekerbayeva’s group was pursued and became the basis of a criminal case for battery.

From witness to sole defendant

By February 2026, Sekerbayeva had gone from being a witness to an accused person and ultimately became the sole defendant in the case.

An indictment approved on 27 March repeatedly described her and her companions as “persons disseminating information prohibited from dissemination on the territory of the Republic of Kazakhstan”.

That language reflected provisions contained in Kazakhstan’s March 2026 law banning so-called “LGBT propaganda”, although the law had not yet entered into force when the café incident took place in November 2025.

The proceedings initially involved three members of Sekerbayeva’s group, but the case eventually narrowed until she was the only person facing prosecution.

At trial, the prosecution relied largely on the complainant’s testimony, which Sekerbayeva says changed in detail over the course of the proceedings, as well as testimony from two witnesses.

According to the case material reviewed for this article, none of the available recordings – including footage from the complainant’s phone and from phones belonging to people accompanying her – show Sekerbayeva striking anyone. Sekerbayeva says the café itself had a surveillance camera, although without audio, and that police relied on only a short segment that did not show the complainant entering or the beginning of the confrontation.

The prosecution’s forensic medical report documented a single bruise on the complainant’s upper arm, which was classified as falling below the threshold of “light harm to health”.

“I should be equal in this case. I should be investigated equally with [her]. No, it was never equal. Never,” Sekerbayeva says.

Her lawyers argued that the prosecution amounted to retaliation for her human rights work and her sexual orientation.

The court rejected this interpretation.

“The defendant’s arguments about alleged persecution on political motives, as well as on the basis of her belonging to LGBT, are a method of defence and are refuted by the case materials,” the judgment stated.

The case materials nevertheless contain explicit references to Sekerbayeva’s LGBTI activism. In statements to police, the complainant repeatedly described her as an activist engaged in “LGBT propaganda”.

A conviction upheld on appeal

On 22 April 2026, the court found Sekerbayeva guilty.

She appealed, but on 2 June the Astana City Court upheld the conviction in full, finding that the original verdict had been “comprehensively, fully and objectively” substantiated.

The decision took effect immediately.

Sekerbayeva had anticipated the outcome.

“We believe the appeal court will likely uphold the lower court’s ruling,” she said before the decision. “We want to exhaust all avenues for defending our rights at the local level before moving to the international stage.”

LGBTI rights under growing pressure in Kazakhstan

The case has unfolded against a broader deterioration in conditions for LGBTI people and human rights defenders in Kazakhstan.

In late 2025, following a 2024 petition signed by 50,000 people demanding restrictions on public LGBTI representation, Kazakhstan’s parliament passed legislation banning the “propaganda of non-traditional sexual orientation and paedophilia” in the media and online.

The law was signed in December 2025 and entered into force in March 2026.

Read more on Novastan: Queer life under pressure in Kyrgyzstan

The legislation has drawn comparisons with Russia’s 2013 anti-LGBTI “propaganda” law, which international human rights bodies have repeatedly found incompatible with fundamental rights.

Amnesty International warned before the Kazakhstani legislation was adopted that such restrictions would further entrench stigma, fear and censorship.

The measure followed earlier discriminatory changes. In 2024, for example, Kazakhstan barred LGBTI people from adopting or mentoring orphans.

Read more on Novastan: When Freedom of Speech Is a Joke: Author of a Satirical News Outlet Detained in Kazakhstan

Further restrictions were incorporated into the new Constitution adopted on 15 March 2026, which defines marriage exclusively as a union between a man and a woman.

Critics also argued that the constitutional process lacked inclusive public consultation and meaningful participation by independent civil society.

The Constitution permits broader restrictions on freedom of expression, association and peaceful assembly on the basis of concepts including “constitutional order” and “public morality” – terms human rights advocates fear could be interpreted expansively.

Feminita under pressure

The case file identifies Sekerbayeva as director of Feminita, the feminist initiative for lesbian, bisexual, queer and trans women that she co-founded with fellow activists.

Feminita is one of the few organised LGBTI groups operating openly in Central Asia.

Kazakhstani authorities have repeatedly refused to register the organisation since it first applied for legal recognition in 2017.

Days before the November 2025 confrontation in Astana, Feminita had organised, funded and hosted a strategic meeting in Almaty bringing together LGBTI activists from across Kazakhstan to discuss how their work could continue under the impending “propaganda” law.

“Feminita was one of the organisers who found money, who rented a hotel and actually found the platform,” Sekerbayeva recalls. “We invited everybody, even the people who are in conflict with us.”

She says the organisation’s visibility has made both her and her colleagues targets for years.

In 2018, Sekerbayeva was arrested and convicted of “petty hooliganism” for taking part in a photoshoot challenging stigma surrounding menstruation.

In 2021, a Feminita event in Shymkent was violently disrupted by a group of men. Sekerbayeva says she was dragged by the hair and punched in the face.

She also served ten days of administrative detention following a 2025 protest against femicide.

Read more on Novastan: Women’s Day in Kazakhstan: hundreds gather for rally in Almaty

During the hearings in her latest case, Sekerbayeva says anonymous and newly created social media accounts repeatedly portrayed her as guilty and deserving of punishment.

Her mother, a paediatrician in Astana, has told her that she is too afraid of possible professional repercussions to attend the hearings.

Adapting activism under the new law

Rather than suspending its activities altogether, Feminita has adapted its public presentation.

We work on the protection of LGBT women’s rights and researchers, mobilisation of community, while also integrating feminist business ideas and eco-feminist activities into our strategic framework.”

“I just want people to see it was a political case”

Asked what justice would mean to her, Sekerbayeva says she is not seeking revenge.

“For now, for me, justice would mean reopening the case and showing that it was not correct to charge me,” she says.

“They should hold to account not only the provocateur, but also the police, the prosecutor’s office, the Committee of National Security and the akimat [local council]. Everybody should be named for how they did this provocation.”

“I don’t need apologies from them. I just want people to see it was a political case, and to see how it was created.”

Her expectations stretch beyond the immediate legal process.

“Even if I will not be alive,” she adds, “I think there will come a time when everything will be reinvestigated again. And I really believe that time will come.”

It would not be the first time Sekerbayeva has turned the label of “hooligan” back on the authorities.

Speaking to Amnesty International in 2019 after an earlier conviction for hooliganism, she said:

“Being a woman human rights defender is much more important – even if that makes me a ‘hooligan’ in the eyes of the authorities.”

By Vahid Aliyev, Global Civic Space Fellow at Amnesty International.

The post “A public lesson to everybody”: Kazakhstan convicts feminist and LGBTI rights activist Zhanar Sekerbayeva appeared first on Novastan English.

From Kazakh-Russian code-switching to French puns and Turkic-inspired typography, Kazakhstan’s musicians are turning multilingualism into a creative language of their own.

Imagine you’re at a concert in Almaty. The lights go down, the crowd falls quiet, and a singer steps up to the microphone. What comes next is not quite Kazakh, Russian or English, but a mixture of all three. The languages intertwine within the same line, sometimes even within the same word. The audience does not blink; if anything, it seems more engaged. The mixture is familiar because it reflects the way many people speak in everyday life. Kazakhstan’s multilingual reality gives musicians room for creative wordplay, while language choice can also signal artistic values, identities and worldviews. The examples below show some of the ways musicians bend, combine and reshape the languages around them.

A multilingual music scene

Kazakhstan has a layered linguistic history. Kazakh is the state language, while Russian remains widely spoken, in part as a legacy of Soviet-era language policies. English, meanwhile, has become increasingly visible among young, urban and globally connected Kazakhstanis. Turkish, Korean, Japanese and other languages also attract interest through the cultural products consumed by younger audiences. Debates over Kazakhstan’s planned transition from Cyrillic to a Latin-based Kazakh alphabet add another layer to this already complex linguistic environment.

Public debates about language can sometimes suggest a simple equation: one language, one script, one identity. Official language policy strongly promotes Kazakh and often emphasizes standard or “correct” usage. Yet local hip-hop, Q-pop and indie artists frequently disrupt these expectations. They switch between languages and scripts, insert slang and borrow sounds from elsewhere, turning linguistic mixture itself into a creative resource.

Global hip-hop, Kazakh references

In 2022, Irina Kairatovna, one of Kazakhstan’s most popular hip-hop groups, and rapper Shiza released the song ‘Kok tu’[1], which opens with these lines:

This kind of language mixing is common in Kazakhstani hip-hop, alongside English phrases and references drawn from global hip-hop culture. The lyrics also contain words such as ‘zhuz’ and ‘ru’, referring to forms of Kazakh tribal and clan affiliation. The result is both global and intensely local. Artists can signal familiarity with the traditions and conventions of international hip-hop while grounding their music in distinctly Kazakh social references, sounds and meanings.

Shiza is based in Shymkent, a southern Kazakhstani city where Kazakh is widely spoken. His lyrics are mainly in Kazakh, with occasional lines or words in Russian and English. Irina Kairatovna, by contrast, is based in Almaty and often uses separate verses in both Kazakh and Russian, alongside English words and phrases. This multilingual approach can also broaden an artist’s potential audience, including Russian-speaking listeners beyond Kazakhstan.

Ninety One and the politics of language

Ninety One, one of Kazakhstan’s best-known Q-pop groups, offers a different example. Q-pop draws inspiration from K-pop while developing a distinctly Kazakh-language pop culture. The group’s name refers to 1991, the year Kazakhstan gained independence, and the members have presented themselves through a strongly patriotic and decolonial frame while performing predominantly in Kazakh. They have played an important role in making Kazakh-language pop more visible to younger audiences. At the same time, they notably avoid Russian in their songs while freely experimenting with English and other languages.

Several of Ninety One’s songs turn this linguistic experimentation into wordplay. ‘Mooz’ and ‘Ah!Yah!Mah!’, for example, contain English sections or lines. The group also plays with similarities between Kazakh and languages such as English, French and Spanish. In ‘Mooz’, meaning ‘ice’, the spelling uses the English-looking ‘oo’ in place of the Kazakh letter ‘ú’. In ‘Ah!Yah!Mah!’, English-style exclamations echo the Kazakh word ‘ayama’, meaning ‘do not pity’. A similar play between Kazakh and French runs through ‘Jur mapelep’, whose title sounds like the French phrase ‘je m’appelle’. In ‘Senorita’, the artists combine Spanish phrases such as ‘Mi casa, su casa’ with the Kazakh word ‘bailandy’ (‘he or she became attached’), creating a phonetic echo of the Spanish ‘bailando’. These choices showcase the flexibility of Kazakh while also demonstrating the artists’ linguistic inventiveness and cosmopolitan references.

Playing with scripts and typography

Script and typography provide another field for experimentation. Against the backdrop of Kazakhstan’s long-running debate over a transition from Cyrillic to Latin script, some artists have also reimagined writing systems used in the region before the Soviet period. Irina Kairatovna, for example, used Cyrillic lettering designed to resemble Arabic script on the poster for the short film ‘Turning Over Thirty’. Rapper Yenlik has used Latin lettering with a similar visual reference to Arabic script on an album cover. Sary, a band working in the growing Q-rock (Qazaq rock) scene, uses a logo whose Latin lettering evokes Turkic runiform writing. Through typography, these artists connect contemporary popular culture with older layers of the region’s literary and cultural history.

Read more on Novastan: From Küi to Metallica: How Aldaspan Electrified the Kazakh Dombra

After 2022: new cultural directions

The balance between these languages is also changing. Whereas artists such as Irina Kairatovna have used Russian as part of a multilingual strategy that can reach audiences across the post-Soviet space, groups such as Ninety One focus more strongly on Kazakh-speaking listeners while also looking toward international, often English-speaking audiences. Demand for high-quality cultural products in Kazakh had already been growing, but Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine gave questions of language and national identity new urgency. Some Kazakhstan-born artists who had worked in Russia, including Skryptonite, M’Dee and Dequine, returned to Kazakhstan and publicly condemned the war. More broadly, parts of the local music scene have increasingly looked toward Western and Asian markets, and some artists have declined to perform in Russia.

Read more on Novastan: Central Asian rap in 10 tracks

International attention has followed. In 2026, hip-hop artist Yenlik appeared on COLORS, the German online music platform that has featured international stars including Billie Eilish, Drake and Doja Cat. The platform has more than eight million followers, and Yenlik’s performance attracted more than half a million views. In 2025, the British platform Dazed interviewed the Kazakhstani indie artist Samrattama. Actor Iain Armitage, known for the television series Young Sheldon, has also said online that Kazakh singer Ayau is among his favorite artists, bringing her additional international attention. Taken together, these examples point to a broader shift: Russia is no longer the only external cultural reference point for musicians from Kazakhstan, as Western and Asian platforms become increasingly important.

Russian still matters

Yet the growing symbolic importance of Kazakh does not mean Russian has disappeared from the music industry. Performing in Kazakh can signal patriotism and alignment with local cultural values, but Russian remains important in professional and commercial life. According to people working in the sector, contracts and financial arrangements with advertising companies are still often handled in Russian. In practice, working in the creative industries – and in urban professional life more generally – can still be difficult without it. It is therefore too early to speak of a complete ‘Kazakhization’ of the music scene. What is visible instead is a substantial, but uneven, linguistic shift.

Kazakhstan’s multilingual environment, combined with the coexistence of several scripts and writing traditions, gives musicians unusually rich material for linguistic experimentation. Artists use language choice, code-switching, script and typography to communicate values, identities and worldviews. There is a clear decolonial current and a growing body of high-quality music in Kazakh, but the picture is more complicated than a simple replacement of Russian by Kazakh. Russian remains significant, while English and other international languages are becoming increasingly prominent in the country’s music scene.

These examples capture only a fraction of the linguistic experimentation taking place in Kazakhstan’s music. Future pieces in this series will look at the rise of Qazaq rock, the country’s underground music scene, and the ways Russia’s war against Ukraine has reshaped the choices and horizons of local musicians.

Article by Merey Otan, PhD in Eurasian Studies, Nazarbayev University.

[1] ‘Kok tu’ translates from Kazakh as ‘blue flag’, referring to Kazakhstan’s national flag, which features a blue background, a golden sun and eagle, and traditional Kazakh ornamentation.

The post From Q-pop to Hip-Hop: Kazakhstan’s Multilingual Sound appeared first on Novastan English.

Independent journalism cannot survive on good journalism alone. Marius Dragomir, director of the Media and Journalism Research Center, speaks to Novastan English Editor-in-Chief Mathieu Lemoine about media capture, donor dependence, the transition from volunteer initiatives to professional newsrooms, the particular economics of Central Asian and exiled media, and the growing threat AI poses to specialist publications.

Why good journalism does not guarantee financial survival

Novastan: To begin, could you introduce yourself and the Media and Journalism Research Center to our readers? What questions have guided your work on media ownership, funding, policy and editorial independence?

Marius Dragomir, director of the Media and Journalism Research Center: I am a journalist by training who ended up spending most of his career studying the economics and politics of journalism rather than practising it. I spent over a decade at the Open Society Foundations, where I ran the research and policy portfolio of the Program on Independent Journalism and edited comparative projects such as Television Across Europe and Mapping Digital Media, which covered 56 countries. I then directed the Center for Media, Data and Society at Central European University until it closed in 2022, and I founded the Media and Journalism Research Center that same year to continue that body of work.

MJRC is an independent research centre funded through a mix of research grants, philanthropic contributions and commercial revenue. All profits are reinvested in research, and we accept no government money of any kind. That last point is not a slogan, but a methodological necessity. It is difficult to publish credible research on how governments capture media while taking money from governments.

Our main projects follow the links between ownership, influence, money and journalism. The State Media Monitor, for example, maps the funding, governance and editorial autonomy of state and public media worldwide: in the 2025 edition, 606 outlets across 170 countries. The Media Influence Matrix examines, country by country, who actually shapes journalism: government and regulators, funders, and technology companies. The Global Media Finances Map tracks the financial performance of some 24,000 media companies in around 60 countries. We also run a Media Capture Monitoring Report with IPI in Vienna.

The question that has guided all of it is deceptively simple: who pays for journalism, through which channel, and what does that money buy? Ownership registries and press-freedom rankings tell you part of the story. But influence over journalism is usually exercised through the accounting department, not the newsroom: through an advertising contract, a licence renewal, a printing bill, a tax audit, a grant condition. If you want to understand editorial independence, it is important to follow the invoices.

Independent media are often evaluated primarily through the quality and public value of their journalism. Why does strong editorial work so often fail to produce financial sustainability?

Because quality and revenue are produced by two different organisational capacities, and most independent outlets have only invested in one of them.

Journalism was never really sold to audiences at cost. For most of the twentieth century, readers paid a fraction of the price of producing news, and advertisers covered the rest, in most cases not because they valued journalism, but because they had no cheaper way to reach an audience. Once they found one, that subsidy left, and it left permanently.

What remains is a market in which attention, not quality, is the priced commodity. Nothing in that market rewards the six months of work behind an investigation more than it rewards a piece of aggregation produced in 20 minutes. In captured markets, the distortion is even blunter: the biggest buyer of advertising is often the state, and it is not buying attention at all, but compliance.

We also have to remember that independent newsrooms are usually founded by journalists, for good reasons. But journalistic culture treats commercial work as slightly disreputable, something to be done reluctantly and by whoever has least to do. An outlet can win awards for a decade while nobody ever owns the revenue line.

Excellent journalism does not fail to produce sustainability. It simply does not produce it by itself: it has to be converted into money by someone whose job that is, and that conversion is a professional skill, not a moral consequence of doing good work.

What are the main structural weaknesses of the traditional media business model today? Are these problems fundamentally different for small, nonprofit or specialist publications than for large national media organisations?

The traditional model rested on three pillars that have all been removed.

First, bundling: a newspaper sold sport, classifieds, weather, obituaries and investigative reporting in one package, and the profitable parts paid for the unprofitable ones. Digital distribution unbundled all of it.

Second, control of distribution: a printing press and a licence were expensive, which created a barrier to entry and a local monopoly. That barrier is gone.

Third, direct access to the audience: publishers now reach most readers through intermediaries – search engines, social platforms, and increasingly AI assistants – that own the relationship, set the terms, and can change them overnight.

For small, nonprofit and specialist publications, the diagnosis differs in important ways. Their weakness is not the collapse of a legacy model they never had; it is a structural overhead problem. There is a floor of institutional cost – legal compliance, accounting, fundraising, editorial management, security, technology – that does not shrink in proportion to the size of the newsroom. A five-person outlet carries almost the same administrative burden as a 50-person one and has one-tenth of the capacity to absorb it. That is why so many small outlets are structurally condemned to under-invest in the very functions that would make them sustainable.

Their advantages are real but narrow. They have low fixed costs, no legacy print infrastructure, no unionised back office and, very importantly, a defined and identifiable audience, which is the precondition for any direct revenue model. A specialist publication covering Central Asia knows exactly who its readers are and why they need it, in a way a general national daily no longer does.

Large national organisations face the opposite problem: they have the resources to build revenue capacity but are far more exposed to capture. They are big enough to be worth buying, worth pressuring and worth subsidising. Our financial analysis of Hungarian media companies, published in 2025, showed measurably how proximity to political power reshapes the financial outcomes of media firms.

Small outlets are rarely captured through acquisition: they are captured through starvation, or simply outlawed.

Can readers and donors sustain independent media?

Your research has emphasised the importance of building a direct relationship between media outlets and their audiences. Under what conditions can memberships, subscriptions and reader donations provide a meaningful source of income? Why do these models succeed for some publications but fail for others?

Four conditions, in my experience, and the model tends to fail when any one of them is missing.

One is a clearly bounded community. People do not pay for information, which is abundant. They pay for belonging, identity, or a service they cannot obtain elsewhere. Outlets serving a defined community – a profession, a diaspora, a region, a cause – convert far better than general-interest outlets, regardless of quality.

Second is a market where paying is normal, safe and technically possible. This is the condition most often overlooked from Western Europe. In much of the world, small recurring online payments are unusual, card penetration is low, and, decisively, a domestic payment to an independent outlet leaves a traceable record. In an environment where an outlet may be declared extremist, asking readers to subscribe is asking them to accept a risk, not a price.

Third, an actual product. Membership is not a donation button. It is a set of obligations the outlet takes on: newsletters, events, access, data, community, a reason to renew. Many outlets adopt the vocabulary of membership without building the product, then conclude the model does not work.

And finally, someone who owns it. The single strongest predictor is whether anybody is professionally responsible for the revenue relationship. For example, for-profit European digital natives derive their main revenue from advertising, website subscriptions and grants, in that order, while nonprofits rely on grants, individual donations and membership. Legal form shapes the achievable revenue mix more than most founders expect at the moment they register the organisation.

Where these models fail, it is usually for one of three reasons: the audience is large but poor or dispersed; the outlet asks for money without changing anything it offers in return; or it starts asking too late, after grant income has already collapsed, when there is no time left to build the habit.

Audience revenue is a slow asset. It has to be built while you still have other money.

Many independent outlets rely heavily on grants and international donors. What are the principal benefits and risks of this model? Can donor dependence influence editorial priorities even when funders never directly interfere with content?

The benefit is straightforward and should not be minimised: donor money funds journalism that no market will pay for. Investigative reporting on corruption in an authoritarian state has, from a commercial standpoint, a negative expected return. Without philanthropy, most of the independent journalism produced in many countries in the Global South over the past 20 years would not exist.

The risks became brutally visible in 2025. When the US government suspended most foreign assistance, roughly $150 million in annual support for journalism and the wider information ecosystem disappeared almost overnight. The consequences: closures, mass layoffs, abandoned investigations.

The cut also taught another lesson: many organisations believed they had diversified, holding grants from several different agencies and implementing partners, only to discover that every one of those grants traced back to the same ultimate source, and all were cancelled simultaneously.

On the second half of your question: yes, donor dependence shapes editorial priorities even when no funder ever comments on content, and this is the more insidious mechanism precisely because nobody is doing anything wrong.

Influence operates through anticipation. Editors learn which themes attract funding – this year climate, next year disinformation, then AI, then gender – and reporting drifts toward the fundable. Story selection begins to be justified internally by whether it fits a logframe. Impact is reported in metrics donors recognise, which are rarely the metrics that matter to the audience. Over several cycles, an outlet can end up producing journalism that is accountable primarily to institutions abroad rather than to readers at home.

And there is a political cost that is now unavoidable in an increasing number of countries. Foreign funding has been converted into a legal weapon in countries that have adopted legislation on foreign-funded organisations. That makes the very funding that keeps an outlet alive a pretext to delegitimise it as a foreign instrument.

What do international donors and media-development organisations most frequently misunderstand about the needs of independent media? How do funding criteria, project cycles and reporting requirements shape the organisational behaviour and editorial priorities of the outlets they support?

Five things, in descending order of damage.

They fund projects when organisations need institutions. Donors buy outputs: an investigation series, a training programme, a podcast. What outlets need is the capacity to exist: a business manager, a lawyer, an accountant, a security budget, a functioning CMS. These are usually classified as overhead and capped at some arbitrary percentage. The result is systemic under-investment in exactly the functions that would end donor dependence.

Secondly, project cycles do not match institutional time. Building an audience-revenue base takes three to five years. Grants run twelve to eighteen months. An outlet is therefore asked to become sustainable on a timetable that makes sustainability structurally impossible, and instead spends its senior editorial time writing applications. In small newsrooms, fundraising and reporting compete for the same person, usually the editor-in-chief, who is also the best reporter.

Thirdly, reporting requirements consume the capacity they are meant to safeguard. A five-person outlet managing four grants with different reporting formats, currencies, audit standards and impact frameworks is running a compliance department disguised as a newsroom. Donors underestimate this because each individually imposes a reasonable burden; nobody counts the aggregate.

Fourth, impact is measured in the wrong units. Reach and output are easy to count and largely meaningless. What a captured environment requires is different: did a procurement decision change, did a public debate shift, did an official resign, did the audience trust you enough to send documents? Those outcomes are slow, irregular and unsuited to quarterly reporting.

And finally, exits are unmanaged. Funders enter loudly and leave quietly. There is rarely a wind-down plan, a transition fund or an endowment mechanism. If 2025 taught the sector anything, it is that responsible donors should be building reserve and endowment structures – including pooled, multi-donor vehicles insulated from any single government’s foreign policy – rather than annual grant cycles that transfer all volatility onto the weakest party in the chain.

From volunteer initiative to professional newsroom

Some media organisations begin as volunteer initiatives but later seek to establish professional structures and remunerate editors, journalists and contributors. What determines whether that transition succeeds? What mistakes should volunteer-founded publications avoid?

This transition kills more promising publications than censorship does, and the causes are almost always internal.

What determines success, in the cases I have observed, is that the organisation formalises its governance before significant money arrives, not after. It decides who decides – who can hire, who can spend, who appoints the editor – while the stakes are still low enough that the conversation is not personal.

It defines roles rather than distributing tasks. Volunteer organisations run on generalists; professional ones need someone who owns revenue, someone who owns editorial, someone who owns operations, and these should not be the same person.

And it accepts that the founding culture must end. A volunteer collective runs on consensus, goodwill and unlimited discussion. That is not a management system, and it does not survive payroll.

The mistakes to avoid are consistent. One is paying everyone a little. Spreading a small budget across 15 contributors produces 15 people who are underpaid and still treat the outlet as a side project. Two properly paid full-time roles change an organisation.

Another is not paying the founders. Founder self-sacrifice looks noble and creates a hidden subsidy that masks the real cost base, and an organisation that cannot survive the day its founder burns out.

Another is choosing the legal form by accident. The structure you register determines which revenue you can access: whether you can take tax-deductible donations, sell advertising, receive foundation grants. Many outlets discover this three years too late.

And finally, professionalising editorial while leaving management voluntary is a major error. The business side is the side that most needs a paid professional, and it is invariably the last to get one.

Diversification is frequently presented as the solution to media sustainability. In practice, how many sources of revenue can a small organisation realistically manage without diverting excessive time and energy away from journalism?

There is no given formula. But from experience, I can say that between two and six revenue sources appears optimal, and that more sources do not correlate with greater success. Outlets with fewer than two sources are likely to fall in the bottom third of revenue earners in their markets. So there is a floor and there is a ceiling.

The reason there is a ceiling is that every revenue stream has a fixed management cost that has nothing to do with how much it earns. Advertising needs a salesperson and an ad server. Membership needs a payment system, a CRM, retention work and a product. Events need logistics and risk. Grants need proposals and audits. Consultancy and training pull your best journalists out of the newsroom.

Each one is a small business, and a five-person organisation cannot operate six small businesses without ceasing to be a newsroom.

The practical rule I would offer: no revenue line without an owner. If nobody’s name is against it, it is not a revenue stream; it is an aspiration that consumes attention. Three streams that someone actively manages will out-earn seven that everyone manages occasionally.

I would add one refinement about diversification that the 2025 funding shock made obvious: what matters is not the number of sources but their correlation. Four grants from four organisations ultimately funded by the same government are a single point of failure. One grant, one advertising base, one membership programme and one licensing deal is genuinely diversified, because no single political or economic event removes all four at once.

How money becomes a tool of media capture

Media capture is often associated with censorship or direct political control. How does capture operate more subtly through ownership, government advertising, subsidies, commercial dependency, regulatory decisions or access to distribution?

Capture is what happens when direct censorship becomes unnecessary. I defined it in a paper in 2019 as a situation in which most or all news media operate as part of a government-business cartel that controls the flow of information in order to protect its unrestricted access to public resources. The key point is that capture is an economic arrangement, not an editorial one.

It works through four levers: media regulation, state-owned outlets, government financing, and private ownership. Within financing, governments use four recognisable tactics: direct funding, state advertising, subsidies, and deliberate market disruption. What unifies them is that none requires anyone to tell a journalist what to write.

State advertising is the cleanest instrument. It is legal, discretionary, unaudited and enormous relative to these markets. When the state is the largest buyer of advertising, media outlets are not operating in a market; they are competing for patronage. No instruction is needed, because every editor can calculate.

Read more on Novastan: Leaving the island: Japarov’s campaign to silence independent media

Then there are the less visible mechanisms. One is informal payments: payments to outlets from politicians and officials – prime ministers, mayors, MPs, sitting and former presidents. This money never appears in any accounts, which is precisely the point.

Another is opacity: companies are not obliged to disclose revenues, so basic market data simply do not exist. Where nobody can see the finances, capture cannot be proven.

Regulation and administrative friction also contribute to building capture: accreditation rules, registration requirements for online publications, licensing, tax inspections, “false information” statutes. Ownership transfer, when companies close to the government buy media outlets, is the most efficient method of all.

And, of course, distribution and infrastructure: printing, kiosks, cable carriage, app stores, domain blocking all matter in how content is controlled. Control of the pipe is control of the publication.

Read more on Novastan: Pressure from Russia increases on Central Asian media outlets

Can private or philanthropic ownership protect editorial independence, or does dependence on wealthy individuals and foundations simply create different forms of vulnerability? What governance safeguards are most effective in protecting editorial decision-making?

It can, but it substitutes one dependency for another, and the honest answer is that ownership form matters far less than governance design.

Private ownership by a wealthy owner, for example, can truly insulate a newsroom from state pressure: a patron with independent wealth can absorb losses and ignore the withdrawal of state advertising. But it creates a different exposure: to that individual’s business interests, political ambitions, mortality and change of mind. Central and Eastern Europe offers an abundant record of proprietors who bought outlets as instruments rather than businesses. Our State Media Matrix includes a whole category, captured private media, precisely because privately owned outlets can be as editorially captured as state ones.

Philanthropic ownership avoids the profit motive but not the dependency. A foundation-owned outlet is subject to strategic shifts, board politics and the thematic fashions of the philanthropic sector. It is more stable and more transparent than an oligarch, but it is not a guarantee.

What actually protects editorial decision-making is a set of structural safeguards, and I would rank them roughly in this order.

First, structural separation of funding from appointment: whoever provides the money must not control who is appointed editor. This is the single most important rule.

Second, appointment rules: fixed, non-renewable terms, supermajority or qualified appointment procedures, and a formal role for the newsroom in the selection or veto of the editor-in-chief.

Third, a capital structure that outlasts the donor: endowments, trusts and foundation-ownership models remove annual renewal as an instrument of pressure.

Fourth, radical transparency of funding: publishing every source above a threshold as a form of protection.

And finally, self-imposed concentration limits. An internal rule that no single source may exceed, say, 40% of revenue is worth more than any editorial charter.

The sustainability challenge for Central Asian media

Your Media Influence Matrix studies of Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan examined how state financing, ownership, political influence, informal payments and foreign donor support shape journalism. Looking back at those findings, how do you think the two media systems have evolved since 2019, and which developments most urgently merit renewed research today?

I have to be honest here because we have not conducted updated fieldwork in Central Asia since those studies, and I would not want to offer an assessment of how the two systems have evolved based on third-party sources. Our method depends on locally sourced financial and regulatory data collected by researchers in the country, and without that I would be speculating.

What I can restate is the baseline we established in 2019, because it defines what would have to be re-measured.

The two countries presented distinct configurations. Kazakhstan was a system of financial dominance: an overwhelming state presence in media funding combined with no obligation on companies to disclose their finances, and marginal donor money.

Read more on Novastan: In Central Asia, the Freedom of Press is in Decline

Kyrgyzstan was a system of informal dependence: a weak advertising market, media instrumentalised by politicians and businessmen who treated outlets as tools rather than businesses, and widespread undisclosed payments from officials, but alongside a rather plural space, a significant donor presence, and a handful of outlets that funded themselves from grants and advertising and could therefore set their own editorial line.

On what most urgently merits renewed research, I would name four things.

First, the actual flow of state media financing since 2019: amounts, recipients and the conditions attached. This is the single most consequential and least documented lever in both countries, and it is precisely the kind of figure that cannot be estimated from outside.

Second, the economics of exile: what it costs to run a Kyrgyz or Kazakh newsroom from abroad, how it is financed, and whether any of it is sustainable beyond the current funding cycle.

Read more on Novastan: When Freedom of Speech Is a Joke: Author of a Satirical News Outlet Detained in Kazakhstan

Third, the migration of journalism to YouTube and Telegram, where a substantial part of independent reporting now appears. We know very little about who funds these projects, what they earn, or how exposed they are to platform decisions.

Fourth, the effect of the 2025 collapse in US media assistance, which I suspect hit this region harder than the global headline figures suggest, and which will have reshaped the funding structure we described in 2019 more thoroughly than any legal change.

Independent Central Asian media often operate across borders or from exile, while attempting to reach audiences exposed to state-controlled information and increasingly restrictive legislation. Does this require a different sustainability model from that used by independent media in Western Europe?

Yes, fundamentally, and the standard Western sustainability playbook is close to useless for them.

The reason is a structural mismatch: for an exiled outlet, the audience and the revenue base are in different countries. A German or French independent outlet builds a virtuous circle: it serves a local audience, that audience pays, local advertisers want to reach it.

An exiled Central Asian or Azeri or Iranian outlet has an audience it cannot legally monetise, in a jurisdiction where its brand may be criminalised, reached through channels that can be blocked, while its costs are incurred in euros in a European capital. Every link in the Western circle is broken.

Read more on Novastan: Closure of Radio Azattyk sparks discontent from civil society and international human rights activists

Their cost structure is also different in kind, not degree: legal defence, digital security, physical security, relocation and visas for staff and their families, trauma support, redundant infrastructure, translation, and the permanent overhead of operating under two legal systems. These are not luxuries, yet they are rarely funded.

And there is a distinctive risk absent in Western Europe: asking the audience for money can endanger the audience. A domestic bank transfer to an outlet designated extremist is evidence, making reader revenue – the model everyone recommends – not merely difficult but ethically fraught.

So what does work? In practice, based on my experience, a different portfolio is needed.

First, revenue raised outside the audience’s jurisdiction: diaspora communities in Europe, North America and other relevant countries who can pay safely and often have strong motivation.

Then, institutional and B2B income needs to be considered: syndication, content licensing to international outlets, translation, research and consultancy for organisations that need country expertise they cannot generate themselves.

Increasingly, we have found that shared services are becoming important for such media. The most realistic efficiency for small exile media is not individual growth but pooled infrastructure: shared legal counsel, shared security, shared accounting, shared fiscal hosting in an EU jurisdiction, joint fundraising vehicles, and so on. Myanmar’s exiled outlets moved towards exactly this kind of cooperation after 2025.

AI poses a new threat to independent journalism

Artificial intelligence and automated information systems are increasingly determining which sources people encounter and how information is summarised. What risks does this create for smaller independent publications, particularly those covering countries or regions that receive limited international attention? Could their reporting become essential to AI systems while bringing them little traffic, recognition or revenue?

Your question contains a sharp formulation of the problem, and the answer is: yes, exactly that. Their reporting can become essential to AI systems while returning almost nothing in traffic, recognition or revenue. This is the defining economic asymmetry of the coming period, and small outlets covering under-reported regions are its most exposed victims.

There are various aspects of that. Let me refer to a few that I consider important.

One is what I call referral collapse: the distribution model that publishers built for 20 years assumed intermediaries would send readers onward. Answer engines are designed not to. When a summary satisfies the query, the visit never happens. For a small outlet whose advertising, membership conversion and reputational visibility all depend on that visit, the loss is not just a decline in traffic; it is the removal of the mechanism by which reporting converts into anything at all.

Another aspect is extraction asymmetry, concentrated on the specialists. Precisely because you are the only detailed English-language source on, say, Kyrgyz media legislation or Tajik labour migration, your reporting is disproportionately load-bearing in any system generating answers about the region.

Large publishers can negotiate licensing deals; a specialist outlet with four staff has no leverage, no legal capacity and no realistic path to individual negotiation. Thus, we expect a situation where the most essential sources have the least bargaining power. That is an inversion of how markets are supposed to work.

And finally, relevant to your question is the language problem, which worries me most. Models are trained on what exists in a language. For some languages – and here I would guess most of the Central Asian ones – the available corpus is dominated by state and state-aligned media, simply because they publish more. Independent reporting is a rounding error by volume.

So the statistical baseline for what is “normally said” about these countries is likely to be drawn overwhelmingly from captured sources, and it is then reproduced fluently, in the user’s own language, with no visible provenance and none of the contextual cues that would once have signalled a state outlet.

Media capture can thus be laundered into apparently neutral infrastructure. This is a new distribution channel for propaganda that requires no propagandist.

MJRC has begun mapping this terrain: our study on how AI is changing media and journalism in Central Europe, Control Beyond Code, which examines the ownership and financial structures behind the AI systems newsrooms are adopting, and the AI Information Map, which maps the sources of information the largest LLMs use to give answers in various languages.

What can small publishers actually do? Three things, none sufficient alone.

Build channels that do not pass through an intermediary – newsletters, events, direct communities, Telegram – because owned relationships are the only assets not subject to unilateral repricing.

Negotiate collectively. Licensing is only viable for small publishers through consortia, and this is where regional and thematic associations should be putting their effort.

And push for provenance and attribution requirements in regulation, because if summarisation is going to become the default interface for information, the minimum acceptable standard is that the source is visible, attributed and linkable.

What does sustainable independent media look like?

Looking ahead, what would a genuinely healthy and sustainable independent-media organisation look like? Which combination of revenue, governance, audience engagement and institutional support offers the best prospect of editorial independence over the long term?

This is very difficult to answer, as there is no ideal model and local context and factors matter immensely. But generally, I would describe it in five dimensions, and I would insist that no one of them substitutes for another.

Revenue first: between two and six streams, with no single source above roughly 40% and no two major sources sharing an ultimate political principal. At least one stream should come directly from the audience, however small, because it is the only income that is also a measure of whether anyone needs you. And at least one person must be professionally responsible for revenue.

Then, governance. A structural firewall between whoever funds the organisation and whoever appoints its editor. Fixed terms, transparent appointment procedures, a formal newsroom role in editorial leadership decisions, and published funding down to a low threshold.

Then, audience. A defined community rather than a general public, and a relationship the outlet owns rather than rents from a platform. In a period when intermediaries are actively removing referral traffic, direct audience relationships have shifted from a marketing asset to a survival asset.

Institutional support next. This is the part that cannot be solved by any individual newsroom, and where policy has to do the work: multi-year unrestricted core funding rather than project grants; pooled and endowed funding vehicles insulated from any single government’s foreign policy; favourable tax treatment for nonprofit journalism; shared back-office and legal infrastructure; and enforceable transparency in state advertising allocation, which remains the most powerful and least regulated instrument of capture worldwide.

Finally, reserves and realism about scale. Six to twelve months of unrestricted reserves, and an accurate sense of the size the organisation can sustainably be. A great many outlets have destroyed themselves by growing into a grant.

A healthy independent outlet is one that could survive losing its largest funder, its largest platform and its most prominent journalist – not comfortably, but survivably.

Interview by Mathieu Lemoine, Editor-in-Chief for Novastan English.

The post “Follow the invoices”: Marius Dragomir on how money shapes independent journalism appeared first on Novastan English.

Mongolia occupies an unusual position between Russia and China while maintaining a democratic political system and cultivating partnerships with countries far beyond its immediate neighbourhood. In recent years, Ulaanbaatar has also intensified its relations with Central Asia, raising new questions about Mongolia’s place between Northeast and Central Asia.

Novastan Editor-in-Chief Mathieu Lemoine spoke with Dr. Mendee Jargalsaikhan of Global Nomads of Mongolia  about the country’s democracy, political instability, mineral wealth, relations with China and Russia, its cautious approach to the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, and its growing connections with Central Asian states.

Novastan: When people outside Mongolia think about the country today, what do you think they most often misunderstand? What developments deserve considerably more international attention?

Dr. Mendee Jargalsaikhan of Global Nomads of Mongolia: In today’s world, Mongolia is no longer at the end of the world. Because of its open society and extensive global interactions, Mongolia is relatively well known, both for its positive and negative developments.

Although Mongolia has a small population and vast territory, there are always many interesting developments. Beyond its nomadic social structures, culture and lifestyle, Mongolia experienced several decades of socialist development from the 1920s to the 1980s, followed by democratisation and the transition to a free-market economy beginning in 1989.

You can recognise the effects of these different layers – nomadic, socialist and capitalist – in almost every aspect of society. When you are in Mongolia, you feel as though you are at the crossroads of three major cultures: Chinese, Soviet/Russian and Inner Asian nomadic culture. Different historical periods also intersect here: nomadic dominance, the spread of Tibetan Buddhism, communist ideology, democracy and globalisation.

These factors all need to be considered to understand developments in Mongolia. If you look at Mongolia through only one lens – whether democracy, mining or its nomadic legacy – you can easily misunderstand what is happening. Fortunately, there are now many sources available to people outside Mongolia.

Mongolia went through another period of political turbulence in 2025, including protests and the resignation of Prime Minister Luvsannamsrain Oyun-Erdene. What did that episode reveal about Mongolian politics and society? Did it point to deeper frustrations over inequality, corruption and the distribution of mineral wealth?

At the simplest level, this episode was a typical outcome of the political system we have chosen. Our system generates “too much politics” and can threaten political stability, particularly when politicians and political-economic factions compete for authority, political prominence and parochial interests.

Unfortunately, inequality is widening, corruption has not been tamed, and political leaders are not delivering on their electoral promises. We often see politicians, parties and factions operating according to election-cycle thinking, which is of course normal in any democracy. But they are also competing for state resources – whether state-owned enterprises, bonds, loans, tenders or large and small construction projects.

In any society, whether democratic, socialist or monarchical, if the state fails to enforce the rule of law and penalise corrupt officials, it loses public trust and support.

So yes, the current political turbulence indicates growing frustration with politicians and political parties, particularly concerning corruption and the mismanagement of state funds, whether taxes, loans or aid. We know that this is one of the factors contributing to political instability and populist politics.

Ultimately, if this situation continues, the political system could gradually evolve into a kleptocratic one. This episode should therefore be seen as another strong warning to our political leaders.

Internationally, Mongolia is often presented as an unusual democratic success story in its neighbourhood. From inside the country, which aspects of Mongolian democracy are genuinely resilient, and where do you see its main vulnerabilities?

I don’t think our democratic success is as unusual as many people argue. It was triggered by the same crisis that affected communist states around the world, and Mongolia’s democracy evolved along paths similar to those followed by Central and Eastern European countries. Other non-European communist states, by contrast, generally did not permit political pluralism and repressed political dissidents.

Fortunately, both of our neighbours have respected our choice of democratic governance from the beginning and have continued their bilateral relations with Mongolia at all levels without interfering with our unique political process, including our elections. This is an important fact.

Three aspects of our democracy could be considered particularly resilient.

First, Mongolia has institutionalised protections for political and economic rights. People can practise religious freedom, possess private property and enjoy freedom of movement both within and outside the country, in addition to political rights.

Second, when the nation faces a political crisis, there is generally both the will and the space to reach consensus. If I define democracy as a process through which people can arrive at peaceful decisions without harming one another, this has been one of the strongest features of Mongolian democracy from the beginning.

Third, in my view, Mongolian political leaders care about their domestic and international image as supporters of democratic values. They understand that abandoning that image would cost them support domestically and complicate Mongolia’s relations with developed democracies.

Alongside these resilient features, however, corruption and populist politics remain our main vulnerabilities. They threaten the efficiency and effectiveness of government as well as public trust in the democratic political system.

Mining has transformed Mongolia economically but has repeatedly become a source of political controversy. What has Mongolia learned from three decades of managing its mineral wealth, and what problems remain unresolved? Do projects such as Oyu Tolgoi and the French-Mongolian uranium partnership indicate a new phase in Mongolia’s resource development?

I am not an expert on this subject, but I think we have learned several things.

First, the country needs to develop and retain its own professional and politically independent experts who can handle investment negotiations with large multinational mining companies.

Second, major investment agreements need to be insulated and protected from domestic politics and the political process, particularly elections.

Third, state-owned enterprises should be managed more transparently and professionally, as they are in countries such as Singapore or Sweden.

Looking back, virtually all major corruption cases and allegations have revolved around major state-owned enterprises. In the late 1990s, this concerned the Erdenet copper factory or the railway. Today, controversies revolve around the Tavan Tolgoi coal mines, while some cases have also involved the Oyu Tolgoi copper mine.

This problem therefore remains unresolved. We still cannot sufficiently restrain the involvement of politicians, parties and factions in Tavan Tolgoi. Political actors use corruption allegations to marginalise their opponents and increase their influence over state-owned enterprises, but we rarely see these allegations resolved through the legal system.

As for the second part of the question, these major projects take a long time to develop. The Erdenet copper deposit was explored by Czechoslovak geologists in 1963, the investment agreement with the Soviet Union was concluded in 1973, and production began in 1978.

Oyu Tolgoi was discovered in the late 1990s, the investment agreement was signed in 2009, open-pit production began in 2013, and underground production followed in 2023.

Looking at these two copper projects alone, I would expect the French-Mongolian uranium project to have to overcome many hurdles before reaching its full potential. We also have to consider commodity cycles and opportunities for economic diversification, both of which are often beyond Mongolia’s control.

China dominates Mongolia’s trade, while Russia remains strategically important and Mongolia simultaneously seeks deeper relations with its “third neighbours”. Where does Mongolia still have room for manoeuvre, and where does geography impose unavoidable constraints? How does public opinion towards China compare with the economic reality of the relationship?

In our foreign-policy concepts and statements, we prioritise relations with our two neighbours. These relationships go back more than two thousand years. Stable and prosperous neighbours are in Mongolia’s interest, just as a peaceful and stable Mongolia is in the interests of our two neighbours.

Mongolia shares long land borders with both countries and is historically, culturally and even ethnically connected with neighbouring regions of China and Russia.

The principal concern for Moscow and Beijing is that Mongolia should not welcome the security or military interests of their strategic competitors. I think this red line is clear both to our third neighbours and to our own political leaders.

Mongolia is therefore keen to develop closer and broader cooperation with its third neighbours in politics, economics and culture. Cooperation in security and defence is generally limited to education and training exchanges, peacekeeping and the development of disaster-response capabilities.

The most difficult periods for Mongolia come when the great powers – our two neighbours and the Western powers – engage in geopolitical and geoeconomic competition. We are entering such a period now. What we don’t know is the dynamics, duration and intensity of this competition. In fact, this challenge applies to many middle and small powers.

Anti-Chinese attitudes in Mongolia are an interesting phenomenon. They wax and wane, as other forms of negative attitudes do. After three decades of peaceful, friendly and good-neighbourly bilateral relations, I would argue that most Mongolians now have a relatively balanced view of China.

A person can simultaneously hold positive, neutral and negative attitudes towards different aspects of China – its culture, government, people or economy. Someone might have positive views of Chinese culture and economic development while holding very different opinions about Chinese nationals or businesses operating in Mongolia.

We should therefore be careful not to overgeneralise. Many Mongolians have mixed views of China, but everyone understands that economically China remains indispensable to Mongolia.

Nevertheless, there is a trust deficit between our two nations because of historical memories, the asymmetry of power and persistent or emerging geopolitical narratives. Unfortunately, negative comments and narratives in the Chinese and Mongolian blogospheres can easily contribute to mistrust and reinforce negative attitudes on both sides.

Mongolia has remained outside the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation while maintaining close relations with most of its members. What choices does Mongolia now face regarding the organisation?

If you read the SCO’s key statements carefully, the organisation’s core area of interest remains Central Asia, rather than Eurasia or South Asia. Mongolia may sometimes appear to be a regionless country in Inner Asia, but it is very closely connected with Northeast Asia.

There are multiple daily flights connecting Ulaanbaatar with Seoul, Tokyo and cities across China. There is only one direct air connection with Central Asia, between Almaty and Ulaanbaatar. Mongolia’s key strategic and economic partners are in Northeast Asia, including China’s northeastern and southern provinces.

Most Mongolians therefore see the SCO primarily as a regional organisation for Central Asia, a region with which many Mongolians still have relatively limited knowledge and interaction. If the SCO were to expand its membership into Northeast Asia – for example, to include the two Koreas – that could affect Mongolia’s perception of the organisation.

Another important reason for Mongolia’s reluctance to join is concern that the SCO could develop into a political and security alignment against the West.

This would create two challenges for Mongolia. First, it could threaten the country’s principled position of non-alignment and its desire to avoid becoming caught up in great-power politics. Second, Mongolia could find itself under pressure from Beijing and Moscow to pursue similar foreign-policy positions.

Given Mongolia’s historical experience of being caught in two overlapping Cold Wars – one between China and the Soviet Union and another between the Soviet Union and the West – non-alignment and an independent foreign policy are highly valued.

Because of these complexities, Mongolia will probably prefer to retain its observer status rather than pursue full membership.

The Ulaanbaatar Dialogue has existed for more than a decade. What can a relatively small state such as Mongolia realistically achieve by creating a diplomatic platform involving much larger powers?

The spirit behind the Ulaanbaatar Dialogue goes back to the 1960s and 1980s, when a small state sought to pursue proactive multilateral diplomacy to increase its international profile and, frankly, to find friends.

There were many difficulties, from geopolitics to Mongolia’s physical isolation. Getting around the world often meant travelling through Moscow, either spending five or six days on the Trans-Siberian Railway or taking long flights through Sheremetyevo Airport. Moreover, Mongolian political leaders had to align the country’s foreign-policy efforts with the Kremlin’s wishes.

An early version of the Ulaanbaatar Dialogue concept was promoted by the Institute for Strategic Studies of Mongolia in 2008, with the idea of making Ulaanbaatar a “new Helsinki” for Northeast Asia. Then, in 2014, political leaders, senior diplomats and foreign-policy experts launched the Ulaanbaatar Dialogue, bringing together policy experts and academics from Northeast Asia and specialists interested in the region.

With the exception of a two-year interruption during the pandemic, Mongolia has organised the Dialogue ever since, and it has become one of our successful foreign-policy initiatives.

It should be understood as one element of a broader series of Mongolian diplomatic initiatives directed towards Northeast Asia and beyond.

There is also the Ulaanbaatar Process, organised with civil society organisations to bring together experts working on nuclear-weapon-free zones and denuclearisation. Mongolia is the world’s only single-state nuclear-weapon-free zone, recognised by the five permanent members of the UN Security Council. The conference helps keep denuclearisation and nuclear risks on the agenda, particularly in Northeast Asia.

Then there is Khaan Quest, a multinational peacekeeping exercise that began in 2004. It brings Chinese People’s Liberation Army personnel together with participants from countries that are otherwise geostrategic competitors, including the United States, Japan, South Korea and India, as well as Central Asian countries and Turkey.

Mongolia has also chaired the Asian Buddhist Conference for Peace since 1970. You can add the Northeast Asian Mayors’ Forum, the Northeast Asian Parliamentary Roundtable and sporting events in which conflicting parties from across the region participate.

Of course, regularly organising international events requires significant effort and expenditure and is scrutinised by taxpayers. Nevertheless, Mongolia may be the only country in the region that maintains friendly relations with all the others without significant unresolved disputes.

Even though the Ulaanbaatar Dialogue is relatively small compared with major multilateral forums, it provides a relaxed atmosphere for discussion. Scholars from China, Russia, the United States, Japan and elsewhere appreciate the opportunity to meet one another precisely because current geopolitical tensions have severely restricted these interactions – much as they did during the Cold War.

This year’s Ulaanbaatar Dialogue included discussions on connectivity between Northeast and Central Asia and the idea of a “green power corridor” connecting the two regions. Why is this connection attracting more attention now?

Although Mongolia is geographically close to Central Asia, Soviet geopolitics separated Mongolia and Central Asia for many decades. Mongolia was one of the early supporters of the independence and sovereignty of the former Soviet republics of Central Asia.

However, the newly independent states initially had different foreign-policy priorities. Mongolia looked primarily towards Northeast Asia, while Central Asian states looked towards Europe.

The pandemic and the changing geopolitical environment have required us, particularly on the Mongolian side, to reassess our foreign policy and reach out more proactively to Central Asian states.

Within this framework, the organisers of the Ulaanbaatar Dialogue began welcoming participants from Central Asia in 2022. It quickly became clear that both Central Asian and Northeast Asian participants wanted greater connectivity and interaction. This is particularly true among policy experts and researchers because they have lacked a platform specifically dedicated to discussing connections between the two regions.

UNESCAP is also important here. It co-organises a panel on sustainable economic development with a strong focus on energy, power corridors and connectivity. We therefore decided to dedicate panels specifically to connectivity between Central and Northeast Asia, including the concept of a “green power corridor”.

Despite all the C5+ bilateral formats involving China, Japan, South Korea and Europe, there is no comparable venue bringing policy experts and academics from Central and Northeast Asia together.

Mongolia’s relations with Central Asian states appear to have accelerated significantly in recent years. What is driving this rapprochement, and which areas of cooperation should we watch over the next few years?

Mongolia and Kazakhstan have historic and cultural links. Around 90,000 Mongolian Kazakhs now live in Kazakhstan. This is Mongolia’s largest diaspora community concentrated in a single country; South Korea comes next, with around 60,000 Mongolians.

For centuries, Mongols and Kazakhs have lived around the Altai mountain range, which connects Russia, China, Mongolia and Kazakhstan. All four countries are now promoting initiatives to increase economic and cultural connectivity across the Altai.

The Kyrgyz Republic is quite similar to Mongolia in terms of economic scale and population size, as well as having an open society. Mongolia and Kyrgyzstan have maintained close political and cultural interactions in the past.

Mongolia’s relationship with Uzbekistan is historic, but its contemporary development is relatively new and remains at an early stage.

One strong driver of renewed attention, particularly from our side, is that all these states operate in similar geopolitical circumstances. They all have to balance their relations within the larger strategic triangle involving Beijing, Moscow and Washington.

They reach out to the West for investment, trade and a degree of soft balancing vis-à-vis China and Russia. At the same time, they need to accommodate Russia’s geostrategic and economic interests while relying heavily on Chinese investment, markets and infrastructure.

In simple geopolitical terms, they all need to pay close attention to the Sino-Russian balance of power. Mongolia and the Central Asian states therefore share an interest in pursuing multilateral foreign policies and finding ways to increase their economic connectivity.

Beyond Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan, Tajik President Emomali Rahmon also made an official visit to Mongolia in July.

Over the next few years, we could see closer cooperation in international forums as Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan promote forms of middle-power foreign policy. China’s infrastructure, including its rail network and ports, could help Mongolia and Central Asian states increase trade flows, even if these remain relatively small.

We could also see more direct flights linking Mongolia with Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. Mongolia, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan could cooperate more closely in promoting the nomadic cultures of greater Central Asia.

Looking ahead five to ten years, what is one development in Mongolia that you think foreign observers are currently underestimating?

Over the next five to ten years, Mongolia could become a more egalitarian and progressively liberal society than other states in the region.

First, our distinctive combination of democracy and an open society has become more firmly established over the past three decades, particularly in comparison with our two neighbours. I expect this to continue.

Second, Mongolia is becoming increasingly urban and digitally connected. We have a younger generation that is increasingly well educated and internationally exposed. Mongolia also has a growing population and relatively high birth rates compared with much of the region.

Finally, Mongolians are relatively tolerant of different views and cultures. Mongolia could become one of the more peaceful and attractive places to visit as climate change increasingly affects Europe, North America and other parts of Asia. Its continental climate, particularly its moderate summers and autumns, could become an advantage.

It is already interesting to see increasing numbers of people from South and Southeast Asia looking for employment opportunities in Mongolia’s education and service sectors.

Interview by Mathieu Lemoine, Editor-in-Chief for Novastan English.

The post “Mongolia cannot be understood through one lens”: Dr. Mendee Jargalsaikhan on democracy, China and Central Asia appeared first on Novastan English.

From Kazakhstan’s pine-covered lakes to Kyrgyzstan’s walnut groves and the tugai forests of the Amu Darya, Central Asia is considerably greener than its international image suggests. But fires, mass tourism and development are testing whether landscapes designated as protected are also protected in practice.

In the height of summer, a spark can be enough.

It may come from a campfire left smouldering beneath the trees, a cigarette discarded beside a road or machinery operating in dry grass. Heat, wind and vegetation do the rest. For the foresters and rangers responsible for Central Asia’s protected landscapes, the first sign may be a thread of smoke rising behind a mountain ridge. By the time a fire is visible from the nearest village, reaching it may already require hours on rough tracks with limited equipment.

Wildfires have made forests an urgent political issue far beyond Central Asia. Yet the region is rarely included in international conversations about them. To many outsiders, Central Asia remains a land of steppe, high mountains and desert: spectacular, certainly, but largely treeless.

The reality is more complicated.

Spruce forests climb the slopes of the Tian Shan. Walnut and wild-fruit trees cover parts of southern Kyrgyzstan. Pine and birch grow among the lakes and granite formations of northern Kazakhstan. Juniper woodlands survive in the mountains of Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. Along the Amu Darya and other rivers, fragments of tugai forest still provide shelter to deer, wild boar and migratory birds. Turkmenistan’s mountains and deserts contain pistachio woodland, juniper, tamarisk and saxaul adapted to some of the harshest conditions in Eurasia.

These landscapes store water, stabilise soil, support rural livelihoods and shelter wildlife. They are also being asked to perform another function: attract a rapidly growing number of visitors.

The result is a regional dilemma. Central Asian governments are creating and expanding protected areas, promoting ecotourism and announcing ambitious restoration targets. At the same time, their forests and parks face hotter conditions, fires, grazing, construction, waste and, in several countries, limited enforcement capacity.

Read more on Novastan: From the Pamirs to the Aral Sea: Following the Amu Darya Through Central Asia

The important question is therefore not only how many national parks Central Asia has. It is how effectively they are protected.

A region greener than its reputation

Central Asia’s forests are not the continuous temperate woodlands found elsewhere. Many are fragmented, highly localised and adapted to mountain, river or desert environments. Their relative scarcity makes them particularly valuable.

In eastern Kazakhstan, Katon-Karagay National Park reaches from forest and meadow to alpine tundra in the Altai Mountains. Siberian larch, fir, spruce, birch and cedar pine provide habitat for maral deer, brown bears, lynx, ibex and the elusive snow leopard. Kazakhstan describes Katon-Karagay as its largest national park and one of its most intact protected landscapes.

Read more on Novastan: How Central Asia is trying to protect the snow leopard

Farther west, the pine forests of Burabay and Bayanaul emerge almost unexpectedly from the surrounding steppe. Their lakes and accessible landscapes have made them popular tourist destinations, but accessibility brings pressure: more vehicles, more informal campsites, more rubbish and a greater likelihood that human activity will start a fire.

In Kyrgyzstan, the walnut-fruit forests around Arslanbob are among the region’s most distinctive human landscapes. Walnuts grow alongside wild apple, pear, plum and hawthorn. Local families have long depended on collecting nuts and fruit, meaning that conservation cannot be separated from questions of access, income and community rights. Forests cover only a small proportion of Kyrgyzstan’s territory, but they remain an important ecological and economic asset.

Higher in the Tian Shan, Schrenk spruce and juniper forests surround parks such as Ala-Archa, Chong-Kemin and Besh-Tash. Camera traps in Besh-Tash recorded snow leopards, argali, Siberian ibex, wolves and foxes in 2025, a reminder that protected areas contain living ecosystems rather than simply scenic backdrops for visitors.

Read more on Novastan: Artists and activists raise awareness for Bishkek’s waste problem

Uzbekistan’s mountain parks protect juniper woodland, wild-fruit species and habitats used by bears, ibex, lynx, vultures and other birds of prey. In the west, the newly created Aralkum National Nature Park represents a very different experiment: protecting life emerging in and around the former bed of the Aral Sea. Uzbek authorities report that the park contains 25 animal species, including four listed in the national Red Book.

Tajikistan’s forests cover only a small part of the country, but their ecological function is disproportionate to their area. Juniper, pistachio, almond and riverine vegetation help hold mountain soils together and regulate water. Our media partner Asia-Plus has reported that forest cover is now approximately three percent of Tajikistan’s territory and that the country’s once-extensive tugai forests have contracted dramatically under agricultural pressure.

Turkmenistan relies less on the designation “national park” than its neighbours. Its conservation system is organised largely around state reserves, including Badkhyz, Köýtendag, Repetek, Kaplankyr and Syunt-Hasardag. These protect ecosystems ranging from pistachio woodland and mountain habitat to saxaul desert, along with species such as kulan, goitered gazelle, urial and markhor.

Together, these landscapes dismantle the idea of Central Asia as an ecologically uniform expanse of empty land.

How many parks does Central Asia have?

The simple answer is that no simple regional figure is entirely reliable.

Kazakhstan consistently identifies 14 state national nature parks. In Kyrgyzstan, however, published totals vary according to whether sources count only parks administered by the principal protected-areas department or include additional sites under different arrangements. Uzbekistan distinguishes between national parks, national natural parks, natural parks and other protected categories. Tajikistan uses several park and reserve classifications, while Turkmenistan’s system centres on state nature reserves and sanctuaries.

A regional total can therefore be misleading unless the legal categories are harmonised.

This is more than a technical problem. It demonstrates how governments can report growth in protected territory without necessarily making clear what each designation permits. A strict reserve may substantially limit human activity, while a national or nature park can contain zones for tourism, roads, grazing or other forms of use.

All five countries have framework legislation governing specially protected natural territories. Kazakhstan’s principal law dates from 2006, Kyrgyzstan’s current framework from 2011, Uzbekistan’s from 2004, Tajikistan’s from 2011 and Turkmenistan’s from 2012. But these laws operate alongside forest codes, land legislation, fire regulations and individual decisions establishing or rezoning particular parks.

The legal designation is therefore only the beginning. The practical questions are more revealing: Can a hotel be built inside the park? Can livestock graze there? How many rangers patrol it? Who responds when it burns? Can its boundaries be altered to accommodate development?

When ecotourism becomes mass tourism

Kazakhstan illustrates the contradiction particularly clearly.

Its national parks have become central to the country’s domestic-tourism strategy. New roads, visitor centres, accommodation and marked routes can make nature more accessible and generate income for remote regions. But growing visitor numbers also produce waste, soil erosion, traffic and fire risk.

Research and regional reporting have already raised concerns about damage to vegetation and soils along heavily used routes. Kazakhstan is now developing a new biodiversity framework for 2026-2035, under which the total area of specially protected natural territories is expected to increase from approximately 31 million to 33.2 million hectares.

The expansion is significant. Yet adding hectares does not by itself solve overcrowding in the most accessible parks or guarantee that tourism revenue is reinvested in conservation.

Kyrgyzstan faces a similar tension. More than 250,000 people visited the country’s protected zones in 2025, generating 38 million soms in revenue. Environmental specialists interviewed by 24.kg warned that roads and hotels were increasingly reaching previously undisturbed forests.

This raises an uncomfortable question: when a protected landscape becomes economically valuable as a destination, which institution is strong enough to say that no further construction should be allowed?

Tourism is not inherently hostile to conservation. Visitor fees can fund rangers, waste collection, trail maintenance and ecological monitoring. Guides and guesthouses can give local communities an economic reason to preserve wildlife and forests.

But this requires rules based on ecological carrying capacity rather than the assumption that every increase in visitor numbers represents success.

A park can receive more tourists and earn more money while becoming less capable of fulfilling the ecological purpose for which it was established.

New parks, old capacity problems

Uzbekistan is moving rapidly in the opposite direction: rather than confronting only the overcrowding of established destinations, it is significantly enlarging its protected-area system.

On 25 March 2026, the government created the Ovjazsoy-Moviy Toglar, Pskem and Fergana national natural parks, covering a combined 188,800 hectares. It also expanded Pop National Natural Park from 10,000 to 135,300 hectares.

The expansion follows earlier decisions enlarging the Nurata and Surkhan reserves and Zarafshan National Natural Park.

These measures could protect important mountain, forest and riverine habitats before roads, settlement or intensive tourism fragment them further. Uzbekistan is also working with UNDP and the Global Environment Facility on landscape restoration in the Western Tian Shan, Nuratau and Kugitang. The programme aims to improve the management of 1.3 million hectares of forests and rangelands.

Yet rapid territorial expansion produces its own challenge. New parks require trained staff, vehicles, fire equipment, ecological inventories, zoning plans, community consultations and reliable budgets. Without them, a park may exist immediately in law but only gradually on the ground.

The distinction between planting trees and restoring ecosystems is equally important. A plantation can increase an official forest indicator while providing less biodiversity than naturally regenerating native woodland. Saxaul planted to stabilise exposed soil has a different purpose from restoring juniper forest, walnut groves or riverine tugai.

The central question is not whether tree planting is valuable. It is what kind of landscape is being created, for whom and for how long.

Fire as the test of protection

Wildfire is perhaps the clearest test of whether a protected area functions beyond paper.

In Tajikistan, more than 430 hectares of forest were reportedly affected by fires across nine regions in 2025. Extreme heat and human carelessness were identified among the causes.

For a heavily forested country, that area might appear limited. In Tajikistan, where woodland is scarce and often protects vulnerable mountain soil, every burned hectare can have wider consequences. The loss of vegetation can accelerate erosion, damage pasture, reduce water retention and expose nearby settlements to landslides and flooding.

Across the region, remoteness complicates fire response. Protected forests may be separated from the nearest equipment by poor roads or mountain terrain. Rangers are expected to monitor tourists, prevent poaching, manage relations with local communities and respond to fire, often across vast areas.

Technology can improve early detection through cameras, satellite monitoring, drones and automated alerts. But an alert only helps when someone has the equipment, personnel and access needed to act on it.

Climate change further narrows the margin for error. Central Asia is already experiencing land degradation, water scarcity and stress on mountain and desert ecosystems. A hotter, drier landscape turns ordinary negligence into a potentially devastating event.

Who is supporting conservation?

Central Asian states are not dealing with these pressures alone.

The World Bank’s RESILAND initiative supports landscape restoration and climate resilience across the region. It also promotes transboundary protected areas and ecological corridors, recognising that watersheds and wildlife do not stop at political borders.

In Tajikistan, a World Bank investment of $45 million supports landscape restoration, sustainable natural-resource management and climate resilience. In Uzbekistan, the Bank has backed a much larger programme for forest and degraded-land restoration. Regional and national projects are also financed through the Global Environment Facility and implemented by UNDP, FAO and government agencies.

IUCN works with members and state partners in all five Central Asian countries, focusing on biodiversity, protected areas and conservation policy. UNESCO supports natural World Heritage sites and biosphere reserves, while the Critical Ecosystem Partnership Fund has channelled support towards civil-society organisations in the Mountains of Central Asia biodiversity hotspot.

In April 2026, the five Central Asian countries signed a regional declaration on biodiversity conservation in Astana. The declaration is politically important, but its value will ultimately be judged in less ceremonial settings: a ranger station with working equipment, a forest where illegal cutting has stopped, a tourism project relocated away from a fragile habitat, or a village given a meaningful role in managing nearby land.

International projects can provide money, expertise and technology. Their lasting contribution depends on whether they build institutions that continue functioning after a project cycle ends.

Protection with people, not against them

Forests are rarely empty spaces.

People collect walnuts and fruit, graze livestock, gather medicinal plants, work as guides and heat their homes with wood. Restricting access without creating alternatives can turn conservation into a source of conflict. Allowing unrestricted extraction, on the other hand, can gradually destroy the ecosystem on which those livelihoods depend.

This is why the human future of Central Asia’s protected areas matters as much as their legal status.

A family collecting walnuts in southern Kyrgyzstan, a guide leading visitors through the Tian Shan and a ranger watching for smoke may have different immediate interests. But all depend on the forest surviving.

Effective conservation requires communities to receive tangible benefits, participate in decisions and understand why some uses must be restricted. It also requires governments to resist projects that promise quick tourism revenue at the expense of long-term ecological stability.

Central Asia is creating more parks, restoring land and placing biodiversity higher on its regional agenda. Those are real developments. But the coming years will show whether the region is building resilient ecosystems or accumulating protected-area designations.

When smoke rises above a forest, the distinction becomes impossible to ignore.

A boundary drawn on a map cannot stop a fire. A law cannot patrol a mountain trail. A declaration cannot remove rubbish, prevent illegal cutting or persuade a developer to build elsewhere.

For that, a protected area needs people, resources and the political authority to remain protected.

By Mathieu Lemoine, Editor-in-Chief of Novastan English.

The post Central Asia’s Forests Under Pressure appeared first on Novastan English.