A turbulent year in the former USSR is exposing the limits of Moscow’s power.
On 6 October, Kyrgyzstan awoke to a revolution almost no one had expected. Overnight, a crowd of demonstrators protesting allegedly rigged parliamentary elections fought off riot police to seize government buildings in the heart of Bishkek, the capital. In images that would soon go viral around the former Soviet Union, burly young revolutionaries were pictured brewing tea on a portable stove amid the wreckage of the president’s ransacked office.
On paper, Kyrgyzstan is not a likely candidate for geopolitical intrigue. Cripplingly reliant on the remittances earned …read more
Source:: New Statesman
