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TCA Interviews

UNEP Interview: From Space, Central Asia’s Methane Challenge Comes Into Focus

Satellites are changing the way the world sees methane. What was once an invisible leak from a well, flare, pipeline, landfill, or coal mine can now be detected from space, traced to a specific site, and sent to governments and companies for action. A new analysis by the United Nations Environment Programme’s International Methane Emissions Observatory puts that system to the test. Its Methane Alert and Response System, known as MARS, uses 35 satellite instruments to identify major human-caused methane “super-emitters” and notify those responsible. UNEP says the system has already enabled 41 mitigation cases in 11 countries, covering sources estimated to have released 1.2 million tonnes of methane. For Central Asia, the findings are especially relevant. UNEP’s new data includes a rolling list of the world’s 50 largest satellite-detected methane sources, covering oil and gas, coal, and waste, and shows where rapid action may be possible. Several of those sources are linked to Turkmenistan’s oil and gas sector, placing the region firmly inside a global debate over methane transparency, climate responsibility, and whether satellite alerts can lead to action on the ground. Of the 50 sources featured in the latest UNEP/IMEO snapshot, China has the largest number, while Turkmenistan stands out sharply for Central Asia, with the second-largest individual source and four of the top ten. Methane is shorter-lived than carbon dioxide, but far more powerful in the near term. That makes cutting large leaks one of the fastest ways to slow global warming. The harder question, as UNEP’s latest data makes clear, is no longer only where the leaks are, but who responds when they are found. On April 30, UNEP/IMEO presented the new MARS findings, highlighting the growing role of satellite-based monitoring in identifying major methane sources and pressing governments and companies to act. The Times of Central Asia spoke with Meghan Demeter, MARS Programme Manager, International Methane Emissions Observatory, UNEP. TCA: What does the new MARS data reveal about Central Asia specifically that may surprise readers? Demeter: The latest MARS data products depict the region as one with growing engagement and significant mitigation potential. Responses to MARS notifications are increasing, supported in particular by designated national focal points who play a key role in coordinating follow-up with operators. Based on the published 2025 data alone, the response rate across Central Asia currently stands at 22%. Managing a high volume of alerts requires more effort to achieve very high response rates compared to countries that receive only a handful of notifications. Encouragingly, the region has already recorded nearly 20 mitigation cases, underscoring the strong potential for emissions reductions when large methane sources are identified and addressed. TCA: Why does Central Asia matter in the global methane debate, even if it is not the world’s largest methane-emitting region? Demeter: Across Central Asia, looking at the 2025 data alone, UNEP’s International Methane Emissions Observatory, through the Methane Alert and Response System (MARS), detected and notified 298 emission sources from the oil and gas sector. While satellites detect only a fraction of global methane emissions, satellites are highly effective at identifying so-called “super-emitters,” methane emission events so large they can be detected from space. These represent opportunities where action can deliver the greatest and fastest climate wins, while also catalyzing broader change. Regarding the “top 50” list of emission events, 11 of these sources are located in Central Asia, all from...

Regional Ecological Summit

Opinion: The Regional Ecological Summit and the Making of a Central Asian Voice

On 22–24 April, Astana hosted the Regional Ecological Summit—a gathering of governments, international organizations, financial institutions, and civil society that marked a new level of ambition in Central Asia’s environmental diplomacy. Fifty-eight sessions were held across three days at a moment when Central Asia’s ecological agenda is becoming inseparable from its political and economic future. The opening ceremony was attended by the presidents of all five Central Asian states. The summit adopted the Astana Declaration on Ecological Solidarity in Central Asia and brought renewed attention to the need to reform the International Fund for Saving the Aral Sea (IFAS). Taken together, these developments signal more than procedural diplomacy. They point to growing political momentum. The region has never lacked shared history or channels of communication. Russian remains a practical language of intergovernmental exchange, and borders, economies, rivers, energy systems, and labor markets have tied these countries together long before contemporary climate diplomacy gave this interdependence a new vocabulary. For decades, much external analysis of Central Asia expected this interdependence to produce confrontation, particularly around water and energy. Those risks remain real. Yet the Astana summit showed a more complex trajectory. Climate change, biodiversity loss, water insecurity, land degradation, and food security are not separate national problems neatly contained within borders. Addressing them is becoming one of the fields through which regional coherence is being built. The significance of the Summit lies less in ceremonial language than in the consolidation of multiple ecological agendas into a visible diplomatic architecture. Through its panels and high-level discussions, the Summit placed Central Asia’s natural heritage not at the margins of development but at its center. Ecosystems, rivers, glaciers, mountains, and landscapes are not only environmental assets. They are conditions for prosperity, stability, and resilience. Kazakhstan’s chairmanship of IFAS reopened the question of whether the Fund, long criticized for its limitations, can be reworked rather than left as a symbol of failed regional environmental governance. Kazakhstan’s proposal for an International Water Organization should be read in the same frame: it is not merely a technical proposal about water governance but an attempt to move a Central Asian concern into the language of global institutional reform. Kyrgyzstan’s mountain agenda and Tajikistan’s glacier diplomacy also belong to this broader pattern. They are not just isolated national branding exercises. Together with Uzbekistan’s increasingly active regional posture, they form a wider mosaic: each country brings a distinct ecological priority, but these priorities are becoming legible as parts of one regional perspective, and its voice carries more weight when presented as such. This is particularly important in the current geopolitical moment. As larger powers turn inward, compete over corridors, or speak about Central Asia through the old grammar of influence, the region is attempting to define itself not as terrain for another “Great Game" but as a pole of its own. This does not mean distance from external partners. On the contrary, the United Nations was a strategic partner of the Summit, and many formats involved major international organizations, European...

Victory Day

Victory, Memory, and Moscow: Central Asia’s Changing May Calendar

May is when Central Asia’s past crowds into the public square. Workers, soldiers, veterans, constitutions, unity campaigns, and the legacy of World War II all compete for space on the calendar. The dates are familiar across the region, but their meanings are no longer the same. Kazakhstan marks People’s Unity Day on May 1, Defenders’ Day on May 7, and Victory Day on May 9. Kyrgyzstan has a May calendar built around Labor Day, Constitution Day, and Victory Day. Uzbekistan has recast May 9 as the Day of Remembrance and Honor. Turkmenistan lists May 9 as Victory Day of the 1941-1945 Great Patriotic War, but it no longer carries the same public weight as the country’s main state holidays. Those choices show how each state is handling its Soviet past. May 1 can mean labor, unity, or almost nothing. May 9 can mean victory, mourning, family memory, or careful diplomacy. In Central Asia, the politics of memory rarely move through open rejection. It works through renaming, recalibrating, and changing the optics. Russia still treats May 9 as a central ritual of state power. Victory Day marks the Soviet defeat of Nazi Germany in what Russia calls the Great Patriotic War. Under Vladimir Putin, it has become a display of military strength, national sacrifice, and confrontation with the West. Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, that message has become more direct. This year, the image projected from Moscow will be weaker. Russia is preparing to hold its May 9 parade on Red Square without the usual display of military hardware. Tanks and missile systems, long central to the spectacle, are being kept away. Russia’s Defense Ministry cited the “current operational situation,” while the Kremlin linked the change to Ukrainian attacks. For Central Asian governments, that image will be hard to separate from their own handling of Victory Day. Moscow has long used May 9 to gather friendly leaders and place the post-Soviet region inside a shared wartime story. Attendance in Moscow has become a diplomatic signal. Absence has become one too. In recent years, Victory Day diplomacy has shown how Central Asian governments try to respect wartime memory while avoiding full alignment with Russia’s narrative. This year, at least some Central Asian leaders are again expected in Moscow. Kazakhstan’s Kassym-Jomart Tokayev and Kyrgyzstan’s Sadyr Japarov have been reported among those planning to attend, though the Kremlin has not yet published a full list of foreign guests. Central Asian states cannot simply discard May 9. Millions of people from the region served in the Red Army or worked behind the front during World War II; from Kazakhstan alone, around one million people contributed to the war effort, with nearly 271,000 soldiers still listed as missing. Families still carry those memories. Monuments, veterans’ payments, school events, and wreath-laying ceremonies remain important. For many people, Victory Day is personal before it is geopolitical. Yet governments have changed the tone. Kazakhstan still marks Victory Day as a public holiday, but large military parades...

Kamchybek Tashiyev

Tashiyev Charged as Kyrgyzstan’s Elite Rift Deepens

Former head of Kyrgyzstan’s State Committee for National Security (GKNB), Kamchybek Tashiyev, has been charged under two articles of the criminal code, his lawyer said, amid signs of escalating political tension in the country. According to defense attorney Ikramidin Aitkulov, Tashiyev faces charges under Article 326, concerning forcible seizure or retention of power and actions aimed at forcibly changing the constitutional order, and Article 337, concerning abuse of office. The latter charge relates to alleged actions carried out for personal gain or for the benefit of others, and to conduct by a senior public official. A restraint measure has been imposed on Tashiyev in the form of a written undertaking not to leave his place of residence. After questioning at the Interior Ministry, he left the building late on April 29. His lawyer said the former official denies all charges. Tashiyev said he intends to defend himself through legal means. “I am innocent and, God willing, I will be acquitted,” he said in a statement. He also urged his supporters to remain calm and act within the law. Media reports suggest that former Prosecutor General Kurmankul Zulushev and former parliamentary speaker Nurlanbek Turgunbek uulu may also be linked to the same case, though their legal status remains unclear. The Interior Ministry has not publicly confirmed or denied reports that they were questioned. President Sadyr Japarov has previously said that any potential involvement by Tashiyev in the so-called “Letter of 75” should be determined by investigators and the courts. The letter, made public in February, urged Japarov and parliament to initiate an early presidential election, citing ambiguity over whether his current term should be treated under the six-year term in force at the time of his 2021 election or the five-year term introduced by the constitution adopted later that year. Tashiyev’s fall has been one of Kyrgyzstan’s most significant political ruptures since Japarov came to power after the 2020 upheaval. The two men had long been seen as the central tandem in Kyrgyz politics, with Japarov controlling the presidency and Tashiyev heading the security apparatus. That arrangement ended on February 10, when Japarov dismissed Tashiyev as GKNB chairman and deputy chairman of the Cabinet of Ministers. The official explanation was that the decision had been taken “in the interests of the state” and to prevent a split in society. The move was followed by a wider reshuffle inside the security services and parliament, where figures seen as close to Tashiyev came under pressure. The Times of Central Asia previously reported that Japarov’s decision appeared to have broken the Japarov-Tashiyev tandem that had shaped the country’s power structure since 2020. The political pressure on Tashiyev’s network intensified in March and April. Tashiyev returned to Kyrgyzstan in March after more than a month abroad and was questioned by the Interior Ministry in connection with Kyrgyzneftegaz, the state oil company. TCA previously reported that the State Tax Service had revived allegations involving the company and private entities linked to Tashiyev’s relatives or associates, while...

Shanghai Cooperation Organisation

Belousov’s Bishkek Warning: Russia Uses SCO Meeting to Target Outside Influence in Central Asia

The April 28 meeting of defense ministers from the member states of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), held in Kyrgyzstan’s capital, Bishkek, received relatively modest coverage in Central Asia and China. Russia’s Ministry of Defense, however, used the routine gathering to send a sharper message: Moscow remains opposed to any non-regional military presence in Central Asia. According to the SCO Secretariat, the meeting was attended by defense ministers from member states, the organization’s Secretary-General, and the director of the Executive Committee of the SCO’s Regional Anti-Terrorist Structure. “During the meeting, the parties held a substantive exchange of views on pressing regional and international security issues, noting persistent challenges and threats, including international terrorism, extremism, transnational crime, as well as emerging risks in information and cybersecurity,” the SCO said in a general statement. The statement also emphasized the need to strengthen trust between the armed forces of member states, expand practical cooperation, conduct joint exercises, exchange experience, and develop mechanisms for military cooperation within the SCO. China’s Defense Minister Dong Jun used similar institutional language. According to Xinhua, Dong said the SCO should uphold the international order, improve security governance, and “eliminate the sources of turmoil and conflict through shared development.” He also called for deeper defense and security cooperation among member states. Kazakhstan’s Defense Minister Dauren Kosanov presented a report on the country’s approach to strengthening regional security, developing cooperation within the SCO, and improving joint responses to contemporary challenges, according to Kazakhstan’s Ministry of Defense. The ministry said participants also discussed the expansion of practical cooperation between defense agencies and approved a cooperation plan for SCO defense ministries for 2027. Defense ministers from Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan also held bilateral talks on the sidelines of the meeting, discussing military-technical cooperation, joint training, experience-sharing among officers, and initiatives aimed at strengthening regional security. Uzbek media described the talks as being held in a constructive and friendly atmosphere. Russian Defense Minister Andrei Belousov adopted a markedly different tone. His remarks were not limited to general SCO language about counterterrorism or cyber threats. They directly targeted the possible presence of outside powers in Central Asia. “We are closely monitoring attempts by non-regional states to establish a military presence and address logistical tasks in Central Asia. We consider this unacceptable,” Belousov said, according to RIA Novosti. Belousov also expressed concern about Syria, Lebanon, Afghanistan, and the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, warning that militants from crisis zones could infiltrate neighboring countries, including the SCO space. Belousov further argued that U.S. activity in the Asia-Pacific region was having a destabilizing effect. “Their efforts to reshape the regional security system into a U.S.-centric model by strengthening military-political structures under Washington’s control provoke tensions, undermine regional stability, and increase the risks of armed conflict,” he said. The contrast was striking. The SCO Secretariat spoke in broad terms about common threats and institutional cooperation. China emphasized development, governance, and multilateral stability. Russia used the same setting to issue a direct warning over Central Asia. Iran added another layer to...

Sanctions

Opinion: Bishkek Between Sanctions and Africa: The Quiet Architecture of Proxy Sovereignty

The official visit of Togo’s head of government, Faure Gnassingbé, to Kyrgyzstan on April 28–30 should not be read as an isolated diplomatic event. It is taking place inside an unusually dense cluster of activity: the SCO Council of Defence Ministers, the presence of China’s defence minister, the fifth meeting of Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) digital and ICT ministers, and a parallel SCO Forum on Artificial Intelligence. Bishkek, in other words, was not simply hosting an African leader. It was presenting itself — intentionally or not — as a Eurasian platform where security, digital governance, AI, transport, tourism, and external partnerships intersect. This geometry deserves attention. Bishkek as a Digital Interface Over the past several years, Kyrgyzstan has worked to reposition itself — not only as a mountainous transit country, but as a provider of digital state capacity: e-government tools, secure documents, digital identification, fintech infrastructure, and special financial regimes such as the proposed Tamchy special financial and investment territory, which combines Kyrgyz sovereignty with elements of English law and international arbitration. For many African countries, this offer can be attractive. Governments across the continent are looking for administrative modernization, digital sovereignty, and alternatives to legacy Western-controlled infrastructure. For Bishkek, such partnerships offer something equally valuable: visibility, geopolitical relevance, and an opportunity to export state technology beyond Central Asia. Togo is a particularly interesting test case. Lomé is one of West Africa’s important maritime and logistical hubs, with access not only to the Gulf of Guinea but, indirectly, to the Sahel region — Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger — where Russia has expanded its security footprint. If Kyrgyz digital infrastructure were to enter this corridor, it would not be a minor technical export. It would connect a Central Asian jurisdiction to one of Africa’s most strategically sensitive zones. It must be said honestly: this remains a hypothesis. Public information about specific Kyrgyz digital products being offered to Togo remains limited. But the political signal is difficult to ignore: Bishkek is not approaching this visit as a routine bilateral courtesy. The Russia Question There is a more sensitive layer to this picture. Kyrgyzstan is a close partner of Russia. Russia, in turn, is under heavy Western sanctions and is searching for alternative financial, commercial, and logistical routes. This creates a natural suspicion that Kyrgyz digital and financial infrastructure could — directly or indirectly — become useful to Russian-linked actors. This does not mean every Kyrgyz initiative abroad is directed from Moscow. That reading is too simplistic. A more precise framing is this: Kyrgyzstan may be becoming part of a distributed sanctions-era infrastructure in which Russian, Chinese, Central Asian, and Global South interests increasingly overlap. In this sense, Bishkek may not be a “front office” for Russia alone. It may be emerging as a Eurasian adapter — a jurisdiction through which larger actors can interact with sensitive markets under a less toxic, more flexible brand. A7A5 and the Closing Window The crypto-financial dimension makes this issue urgent. A7A5, a ruble-pegged stablecoin issued...