On Wednesday tiny FC Astana welcomes the world for the first ever Champions League match in Kazakhstan […] FC Astana is part of the state-owned Astana Presidential Sports club, created at the behest of Kazakhstan President Nursultan Nazarbayev. 

The author also advocates for the revision and restart of India’s Look North Policy which is under hibernation since decades. India as a major regional and global power cannot leap-frog to the global high table without demonstrating effective and timely initiatives at the regional level, and Central Asia is an important constituent of this region. 

Moscow’s annexation of Crimea was a geopolitical earthquake with tremors extending as far as the information sector. In this new era of “hybrid warfare,” military capabilities and traditional manifestations of power merge seamlessly with intangible factors such as discourse.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Mongolian counterpart Chimed Saikhanbileg on Sunday agreed to promote continued cooperation in the scientific, educational and IT sectors by developing mechanisms for capacity building, collaborative research, technical cooperation, exchange of information and experience sharing.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has been zipping in and out of Central Asia’s capitals, determined not to let the five Stans – Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan – slide out of Moscow’s orbit. “For Russia, it is about maintaining influence, economic and cultural, and maintaining Central Asia as a security buffer.”

A conservative Russian nationalist, Putin has lamented the break-up of the old Soviet Union, not because he regretted the disappearance of communism, but because of the severing of the numerous and deep economic, linguistic, social, and cultural connections that linked most of the fifteen constituent republics of the old USSR.

Designed to attract more visitors to sights, and sites, along the ancient Silk Road which linked China to the countries of Central Asia - and to Rome from about 100 BC - it is particularly hoped to draw more people to China's western provinces.

The Russian language is fading in the region, and there seems little Moscow can do about it.