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BRICS

Tokayev Meets U.S. Envoy Sergio Gor on Sidelines of BRICS Summit

India hosted the 18th BRICS summit in New Delhi on September 12–13. Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan are among the partner countries of this international grouping, which began meeting in 2006 and held its first summit in 2009. Uzbekistan was represented by a delegation headed by Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Economy and Finance Jamshid Kuchkarov. Kazakhstan’s delegation was led by President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev. On Saturday, September 12, the Kazakh president met on the sidelines of the summit with Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Sheikh Khaled bin Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan and Sergio Gor, the U.S. president’s special envoy for South and Central Asia. During his meeting with the crown prince, they discussed economic and investment cooperation. In 2025, the United Arab Emirates ranked among Kazakhstan’s four largest foreign investors. Foreign direct investment from the Emirates totaled $1.6 billion. In January–March 2026, bilateral trade between Kazakhstan and the UAE amounted to $45.8 million. Over the past 20 years, Emirati investment in Kazakhstan has exceeded $7 billion, including around $3 billion over the past two and a half years. That same day, President Tokayev met with Sergio Gor, the U.S. president’s special envoy for South and Central Asia. Gor delivered a personal message from President Donald Trump congratulating Tokayev ahead of the 35th anniversary of Kazakhstan’s independence. They discussed the development of the Kazakhstan-U.S. enhanced strategic partnership, including cooperation in artificial intelligence and digitalization. According to the official readout, they also discussed the Kazakh president’s planned participation in the G20 summit, scheduled to take place in Miami in December 2026. Tokayev said: “I am currently preparing to take part in the G20 Summit in Miami. I believe this will also be a good opportunity to discuss the issues on the bilateral agenda. We prefer not fine words, but tangible results and practical steps to advance our mutual cooperation.” Tokayev also reaffirmed his invitation for President Trump to visit Kazakhstan. Contacts between senior Central Asian and U.S. officials have intensified. The U.S. Embassy in Bishkek reported on September 2 that Gor had met with Tokayev and other regional leaders in Kyrgyzstan. In June, Gor met with Kazakhstan’s foreign minister. Also in June, Tokayev met with Ben Black, chief executive officer of the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation (DFC), as part of Astana’s efforts to expand economic cooperation with Washington and attract more strategic investment. On July 10, Tokayev spoke by phone with President Trump. Another meeting of the secretariat of the C5+1 framework for U.S.-Central Asia cooperation took place in Ashgabat on September 9. Gor serves as both the U.S. ambassador to India and the U.S. president’s special envoy for South and Central Asia. Also on Saturday, Tokayev had an informal meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in New Delhi, at the Russian leader’s residence during his visit to India. Reports suggested the meeting was unplanned. No details of their discussion were released. On Sunday, September 13, President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev delivered a speech at the plenary session of the BRICS Outreach Summit in New Delhi, focusing on the theme of "Strengthening Resilience, Innovation, Cooperation, and Stability." In his speech, Tokayev noted: “Last year, the volume of transit cargo transportation...

Elena Rybakina

Kazakhstan’s Elena Rybakina Wins US Open Ahead of World No. 1 Debut

Kazakhstan’s Elena Rybakina has won the US Open women’s singles title, defeating Aryna Sabalenka 6-4, 5-7, 6-2 in New York to claim the third Grand Slam championship of her career. Rybakina entered the final having already secured the world No. 1 ranking following her quarterfinal victory over Zheng Qinwen. She will officially take the top position when the new WTA rankings are published on Monday, becoming the first player representing Kazakhstan to reach No. 1 in singles. The US Open title adds to her Wimbledon championship in 2022 and Australian Open victory earlier this year. She has now won three of the four Grand Slam tournaments. Sabalenka entered the final as world No. 1 and two-time defending US Open champion. The match was also a rematch of this year’s Australian Open final, which Rybakina won. Rybakina has become one of Kazakhstan’s most prominent international athletes. Her run in New York included victories over Naomi Osaka, Zheng and Coco Gauff before the final. Speaking during the tournament, Rybakina said she was “very proud representing Kazakhstan” and noted growing interest in tennis among children in the country. Her success has marked a series of firsts for Kazakhstan. She became the first player representing the country to win a Grand Slam singles title at Wimbledon and is now the first to reach the top of the world rankings.

Astana Finance Days 2026

Astana Finance Days: Rewiring Finance at Institutional Scale – The Case for Deeper Financial Markets

Kazakhstan needs deeper financial markets and a system less dependent on banks, senior financial officials told Astana Finance Days on September 9, 2026. Speakers at the Astana International Financial Centre (AIFC) explored how digital finance could support that shift during the plenary session, "Innovation at Institutional Scale: Rewiring the Architecture of Finance." The turnout was standing-room only. Over the next fifty minutes, the panelists discussed Kazakhstan’s ambitions as a financial hub and the conditions needed to advance them. Moderator Sallianne Taylor, Bloomberg's EMEA Head of Government Relations, opened by asking what is fundamentally changing in the architecture of global finance, and what it means for Kazakhstan. There were five panelists: Timur Suleimenov, Governor of the National Bank of Kazakhstan; Renat Bekturov, Governor of the AIFC; Timur Turlov, Chief Executive of Freedom Holding Corp.; Sergio Mello, Global Head of Stablecoin Solutions at Anchorage Digital; and Balaji Srinivasan, founder of Network School and bestselling author of The Network State. The Governor's Priority: Stability Before Speed Governor Suleimenov began by naming "geopolitical tension" as the backdrop to today's discussions. "This is the elephant in the room, which we cannot ignore," he said, without further comment. He then described trade and finance flows as changing fundamentally, pointing to "division across the Atlantic. We're seeing trade wars, semi-trade wars across the world." He explained that "finance has always been a partner with trade, investment and finance." That atmosphere of uncertainty "reshapes financial flows," he said. Turning to technology, he noted that "with the invention of blockchain, cryptocurrencies, stablecoins, and everything in between, the traditional financial system has started to undergo very fundamental change. I think we're still in the rule-setting phase." As a result, he said, "There is no set of global rules for decentralized finance, for digital finance, crypto finance. Many countries are looking to strike the right balance between the traditional financial institutions such as banks or commodities or securities markets, and the new ways of doing finance that the market is offering." For Kazakhstan specifically, he argued the moment favors the country rather than threatens it. "I think for Kazakhstan, it's more of an opportunity," he said, pointing to its standing as the region's largest economy by GDP and GDP per capita, and its position as "the biggest financial system, the best financial system, the most capitalized" in Central Asia. That confidence carried into the moderator's next question: "As a central banker, how do you balance innovation with preserving that financial stability and trust?" Suleimenov called it "a never-ending story," then offered the line that framed the whole session: "When you see something new, and you don't have the rules for it, of course you have to evaluate it based on its merits and based on principles rather than rules, and then you come up with rules." He was candid about the risk that comes with new financial technology, but just as quick to put it in proportion. "What we've been seeing in Kazakhstan, I mean, it's 90% positive," he said, acknowledging...

Baikonur Cosmodrome

Space Days Kazakhstan Highlights Push Beyond Baikonur

Kazakhstan is home to Baikonur, the cosmodrome from which the Space Age began, but the country has spent three decades trying to turn that Soviet inheritance into a space sector of its own. At Space Days Kazakhstan, held on September 7–9 in Astana and Baikonur, Kazakhstan presented new satellite projects and plans for international cooperation. A day later, talks with China were announced on a separate five-satellite network for Central Asia. By 2030, Astana plans to assemble an international constellation of nine Earth-observation satellites, six of them Kazakh. The country is also upgrading its national satellite communications system, developing new Earth-observation spacecraft at home, and expanding cooperation with China and other partners. Kazakhstan still relies heavily on Russia at Baikonur, and many of its newer projects depend on foreign technology and cooperation. Nevertheless, Astana is seeking greater control over the infrastructure and spacecraft on its own territory while widening the number of countries it works with. Taking More Control at Baikonur One of the clearest examples of Kazakhstan’s attempt to gain more control over its space sector is Baiterek, a joint project with Russia that dates back to 2004. The original agreement called for a new launch complex at Baikonur. But the project spent much of the next two decades being redesigned as Russia changed the rocket it planned to use. Baiterek was first intended for the Angara rocket, then Zenit, and finally Soyuz-5, known in Kazakhstan as Sunkar. Each change brought further delays. After launch targets in 2023, 2024, and 2025 slipped, Soyuz-5 finally lifted off from Baikonur on April 30, 2026. The rocket carried a dummy payload on the first flight in the test program. The launch mattered less for what it carried than for what it represented. Kazakhstan now operates the launch pad and ground infrastructure used by Baiterek, giving it a larger role at a cosmodrome long dominated by Russia. But Russia still builds the rocket. That reflects the wider relationship at Baikonur. The cosmodrome remained on Kazakh territory after the collapse of the Soviet Union, but Russia leases it through 2050 for $115 million a year and continues to use it for its human spaceflight program. In July 2026, Baikonur was again used for an international mission to the ISS. Kazakhstan is therefore not replacing Russia at Baikonur. It is trying to take a larger role in a space complex where Russia remains deeply embedded. But launch infrastructure is only one part of Kazakhstan’s attempt to develop capabilities of its own. Increasingly, the focus is on satellites. Building Satellites at Home KazSat is the country’s national satellite communications and broadcasting system. KazSat-3 currently provides data transmission, television, and other communications services. Its planned operating life ends in late 2029. KazSat-3R is being developed as its replacement. The national operator, the Republican Center for Space Communication, invited more than 40 spacecraft manufacturers to participate in the selection process. Fourteen companies responded: two from Kazakhstan and twelve from abroad. The operator plans to cover more than half...

Architectural Heritage

Ashgabat’s Postwar Architecture Is Disappearing One Building at a Time

In July, UNESCO added ten examples of Tashkent’s modernist architecture to the World Heritage List, recognizing the buildings and urban complexes that helped reshape the Uzbek capital after the devastating 1966 earthquake. In neighboring Kazakhstan, prominent Soviet-era buildings in Almaty are protected through national and local heritage registers. Turkmenistan has also gained international recognition for ancient sites such as Merv and Nisa, along with traditions of carpet weaving and horse breeding. Yet Ashgabat’s 20th-century architecture remains largely absent from this system of recognition. This has taken on added urgency because some of the buildings that tell the story of modern Ashgabat are already disappearing. [caption id="attachment_56051" align="aligncenter" width="1774"] Image: TCA, Stephen M. Bland[/caption] In August 2026, turkmen.news reported the demolition of several buildings near Ashgabat’s 30th microdistrict. Some were residential blocks. Although some occupants received replacement apartments, other families objected to the relocation terms. In February, the former building of the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography on Azadi Street was also demolished. At different times, it had housed a court and the Cultural Heritage Center. An additional floor and marble cladding had already changed its appearance, although some neoclassical elements survived. Once a building has been demolished, its architecture can be studied only through archives and photographs. For Ashgabat, this is particularly significant because much of the city visible today emerged from one of the worst disasters in its history. The City After the Earthquake The 1948 Ashgabat earthquake struck on the night of October 6, destroying or severely damaging much of the city. The capital had to be largely rebuilt. Architectural historian Ruslan Muradov writes that postwar reconstruction began with two-story brick apartment buildings designed to meet higher seismic standards. Their facades featured decorative plasterwork and carved wooden elements on the loggias, or recessed balconies. New residential blocks were organized around shared courtyards and greenery. In the 1950s, the Academy of Sciences, the railway station, Turkmen State University, theaters, administrative buildings, and new housing transformed the city center. From the 1960s through the 1980s, hotels, public buildings, and residential districts added another architectural layer. Behind this architecture was the everyday life of several generations. Courtyards became extensions of apartments, while institutions and shops occupied the ground floors. The postwar city gradually became an ordinary, lived-in urban environment. Its surviving buildings still offer clues to how Ashgabat recovered after 1948. They show how seismic risk changed construction, how the climate influenced housing design, and how planners used the spaces between buildings. But unlike some neighboring capitals, Ashgabat has no publicly available inventory identifying the most significant examples of its postwar architecture. The time available to document them is shrinking. [caption id="attachment_56053" align="alignnone" width="1774"] Image: TCA, Stephen M. Bland[/caption] Turkmenistan’s Heritage Focus Turkmenistan has five properties on the World Heritage List. Ancient Merv, Kunya-Urgench, and the Parthian Fortresses of Nisa make up three of them. The other two are transnational properties, the Silk Roads: Zarafshan-Karakum Corridor and the Cold Winter Deserts of Turan. Another nine sites are on the country’s Tentative...

Education

New OECD Assessment Reveals Central Asia’s Student Performance

International student assessments help governments identify where students are succeeding, where they are falling behind and how learning outcomes are changing over time. The Programme for International Student Assessment, or PISA, tests how well 15-year-olds can apply what they have learned in science, mathematics and reading to real-world problems. Run by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the assessment is intended to identify weaknesses and track whether learning improves over time. The results released on September 8 show improvement in some areas, declines in others and significant gaps in the regional data. PISA 2025 placed particular emphasis on science and introduced a new assessment of computational problem-solving, part of its broader work on learning in the digital world. What the Results Show Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan participated nationally. Tajikistan was represented by Dushanbe rather than a national sample, while Turkmenistan did not participate. Participant Science Math Reading Comp. ProblemSolving Kazakhstan 420 414 385 449 Kyrgyzstan 363 364 344 388 Dushanbe, TJK 334 382 368 — Uzbekistan 438 N/A N/A 402 OECD average 482 463 461 500 Kazakhstan recorded the highest published regional scores in mathematics, reading and computational problem-solving, while Uzbekistan recorded the highest score in science. Uzbekistan’s mathematics and reading results were not published, preventing a complete comparison across the three core subjects. Central Asia remained below OECD averages, but Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan scored higher than several EU member states in some subjects. Across OECD countries, average mathematics and reading performance fell to the lowest levels yet recorded by PISA. Science was comparatively stable. What Changed The latest scores and the longer-term trends do not always point in the same direction. Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan both participated in PISA in 2022, while Kyrgyzstan’s previous participation was in 2009. Country ComparisonPeriod Science Math Reading Kazakhstan 2022–2025 −4 −12 −1 Kyrgyzstan 2009–2025 +33 +33 +30 Uzbekistan 2022–2025 +83 N/A N/A Kazakhstan’s mathematics score fell by about 12 points from 2022, a statistically significant decline for the country. Its smaller declines in science and reading were not statistically significant. Kyrgyzstan improved in mathematics, reading and science compared with its previous participation. The gains cover 16 years rather than a single PISA cycle. Uzbekistan recorded the largest movement in the regional results. Its science score rose from 355 in 2022 to 438 in 2025, an increase of 83 points. That was also the largest science gain among education systems with comparable results worldwide and more than twice the next-largest increase of 38 points. What Other Assessments Show Other international assessments help put the larger changes in context. Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan were the only Central Asian countries to participate in the 2023 Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study, or TIMSS. The assessment tests younger students and uses a different methodology from PISA. Among eighth-graders, Kazakhstan scored 443 in science and Uzbekistan 396. Two years later, PISA recorded science scores of 420 for Kazakhstan and 438 for Uzbekistan. The assessments cover different students and testing methods, so the scores cannot be compared directly....