In Russia's Embrace

Given Russia’s sharply deteriorating relationship with Georgia and continuing tensions with Ukraine, Moscow continues to maintain surprisingly warm ties with Kyrgyzstan, another post-Soviet state which has been through a similar revolutionary regime change. Experts interviewed by NBCentralAsia in Bishkek explain that this apparent paradox is due to a strongly pro-Russian foreign policy line which never wavered despite the change of government in March 2005.



Russian security agency officials have recently been paying a lot of attention to Kyrgyzstan. On October 3-5, Russia’s defence minister Sergei Ivanov visited his country’s Kant airbase in Kyrgyzstan also attended a joint anti-terrorism exercise in the southern city of Osh. In April, Igor Ivanov, secretary of the Russian Security Council, visited Bishkek, and at the beginning of May the commander-in-chief of the Russian air force Vladimir Mikhailov visited the airbase at Kant.



Experts interviewed by NBCentralAsia say the intensified military cooperation between the two countries, reflected in Kyrgyzstan’s membership of two regional security groupings, the Collective Security Treaty Organisation and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, is proof that Kyrgyz foreign policy remains strongly focused on Moscow.



As political scientist Alexandr Knyazev told NBCentralAsia, “Judging from developments over the last year, one can see that Kyrgyzstan’s foreign policy has turned towards Russia more decisively than before. It’s a marked trend - Bakiev is very well aware that the relationship with Russia is more important than that with the United States and other western countries.”



Professor Bakyt Beshimov, deputy director of the American University in Central Asia, told NBCentralAsia that irrespective of the changes that have taken place in Kyrgyzstan, Russia remains a strategic partner. “Kyrgyzstan is still one of the best disposed of all post-Soviet states towards Russia. There has been no hint of a crisis in relations.”



Other commentators say the time has come to decide on what the priorities for foreign policy are. “Fifteen years on, a new era is dawning for the post-Soviet states. The euphoria is over and it’s time to make sober choices about one's strategic partners,” said political scientist Toktogul Kakchekeev. “Countries are making their choices: either Russia or the West.”



Given the recent row which resulted in the expulsion of two American diplomats and the tough stance that Bishkek adopted in the negotiations on the lease of the United States military base at Manas airport, it is is clear that Kyrgyzstan has made its choice, and is aligning itself closely with Moscow.





(NBCA предоставляет комментарии и анализ широкого круга политических обозревателей со всего региона.)