MOSCOW: Russian President Vladimir Putin touched down Wednesday in Tajikistan for a three-day visit dominated by talks with the leaders of a region where Moscow\u2019s historic dominance is under threat.<\/p>\n
The Kremlin strongman is set to meet on Thursday with the heads of Central Asia\u2019s five ex-Soviet states where China and Europe have been vying for influence in Russia\u2019s backyard.<\/p>\n
Tajik leader Emomali Rakhmon welcomed Putin on arrival in the capital Dushanbe, according to images broadcast on Russian television.<\/p>\n
Putin is accompanied by his Defense Minister Andrey Belousov, who visited a Russian military base in the country Wednesday.<\/p>\n
Kremlin spokesman Dmitri Peskov told Russian news agencies that Putin is also set to meet Azerbaijan\u2019s President Ilham Aliyev on Thursday, following months of frostiness in Moscow-Baku relations.<\/p>\n
Russia has attempted to maintain its grip on Central Asia through deals on energy, including gas deliveries and the building of nuclear reactors.<\/p>\n
Though Moscow denies the existence of any tensions with China, Beijing has seen its presence in the region wax, while the European Union has made overtures to Central Asia\u2019s leaders.<\/p>\n
This year has seen two regional summits, with the EU in April followed by one with China in June, after a similar meeting with Turkiye in 2024.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
MOSCOW: Russian President Vladimir Putin touched down Wednesday in Tajikistan for a three-day visit dominated by talks with the leaders of a region where Moscow\u2019s historic dominance is under threat. The Kremlin strongman is set to meet on Thursday with the heads of Central Asia\u2019s five ex-Soviet states where China and Europe have been vying …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":87918,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-87901","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87901","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=87901"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87901\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":87920,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87901\/revisions\/87920"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/87918"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=87901"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=87901"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=87901"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}