EurasiaChat

Feb 12 2024 33 ep. 29 mins 27

EurasiaChat Podcast artwork

A biweekly conversation about events in Central Asia hosted by veteran journalists Peter Leonard and Alisher Khamidov.

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Bowing out with a look at Central Asia’s sad media scene

Feb 12 2024 47 mins

To mark this last-ever edition of our EurasiaChat podcast, we decided to take a glance at the health of the media scene across Central Asia.The report card does not make for encouraging reading.Peter Leonard, Eurasianet’s Central Asia editor, kicked things off with Kyrgyzstan, which has been the site of some troubling developments of late.In the latest alarming sign of decline, a

Kazakh Horror hit, strikers marching on, Kyrgyz media in peril

Jan 22 2024 30 mins

Dastur, a newly released horror movie in Kazakhstan, has been smashing box office records.And so, in this latest edition of our EurasiaChat podcast, we decided to speak to our producer, Aigerim Toleukhanova, to find out what all the fuss is about.First, the plot: the narrative revolves around the fallout that ensues after the wild-child son of a rich businessman rapes a school-leav

Kyrgyzstan puts out the flags

Jan 08 2024 30 mins

Kyrgyzstan opened this New Year with a slightly new-look flag. The changes were not, in truth, that great. The colors and the sun-like figure at the center of the standard remained more or less the same.But President Sadyr Japarov, who chivvied lawmakers into proposing this initiative in September, said the sun emblem needed to look less like a sunflower, which he believes to symbo

EurasiaChat: Is a green Central Asia a mirage?

Dec 10 2023 33 mins

On the occasion of the United Nations Climate Change Conference taking place in Dubai, the latest edition of the EurasiaChat podcast focused on how Central Asia is meeting the challenge.Turkmenistan made headlines with the announcement that it is signing up to the Global Methane Pledge, a voluntary agreement that commits adherents to cut methane emissions by 30 percent by 2030.The

Gender-based violence rears its ugly head again

Nov 27 2023 31 mins

In this week’s edition of the EurasiaChat podcast, we turned our attention to the problem of gender-based violence.This topic has been in the news of late in Kazakhstan following the killing last month of a woman, Saltanat Nukenova, allegedly at the hands of her husband, a former top-ranking official in Kazakhstan’s government. Kuandyk Bishimbayev, 43, is now in jail pending fu

EurasiaChat: As miners die, officials talk assets

Nov 13 2023 34 mins

An explosion at a coal mine in central Kazakhstan last month claimed the lives of 46 workers in what has been described as the deadliest industrial accident in the country’s history.This week on the EurasiaChat podcast, co-presenters Alisher Khamidov and Peter Leonard opened by dwelling on how the public agenda has been dominated by speculation over who will end up owning the com

EurasiaChat: Shrinking Caspian, invisible opposition, elusive pipeline

Oct 30 2023 28 mins

Central Asia is grappling with another looming water crisis. In this episode of the EurasiaChat podcast, hosts Peter Leonard and Alisher Khamidov delved into the concerning drop in the Caspian Sea's water level, which has dire implications for the ecosystem and marine economy in the region.The decline in the Caspian Sea's water level is a complex issue influenced by both natural fo

EurasiaChat: Border progress, gangster woes, Russia's return

Oct 16 2023 30 mins

Russia is refocusing its attention on Central Asia.As Alisher Khamidov and Peter Leonard discussed in the latest edition of the EurasiaChat podcast, last week saw a notable visit to Kyrgyzstan by Russian President Vladimir Putin, who was in the country to attend a Commonwealth of Independent States leader summit. Beyond the usual speechifying and deal-making, there was some symboli

EurasiaChat: Intrigue in Central Asia's ruling palaces

Oct 02 2023 33 mins

In the latest edition of the EurasiaChat podcast, resident co-presenter Alisher Khamidov opened with some questions about a visit that Peter Leonard, Eurasianet’s Central Asia editor, recently paid to Tajikistan.The standard narrative is that the country is in a perennial economic slump. And there is more than enough data to support that idea. Hundreds of thousands of people have

EurasiaChat: Speaking truth to (and about) power

Sep 17 2023 31 mins

In this latest edition of the EurasiaChat podcast, EurasiaNet Central Asia editor Peter Leonard and co-presenter Alisher Khamidov first turned their attention to more bad news about media freedoms in Kyrgyzstan.As they had threatened that they would do, the authorities have gone ahead and ordered local internet service providers to block access to the website of independent news we