Euro-Atlanticists’ Expansion Into Central Asia Aims to Tackle Criticism of West's Dominance

Central Asia is the topic of a Valdai Discussion Club conference attended by more than 50 experts and political figures from India, Iran, Kazakhstan, China, Kyrgyzstan, Mongolia, Pakistan, Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.

«Euro-Atlanticists already mentally linked Central Asia to Western Europe via the South Caucasus in order to reduce these regions’ interest in cooperation with Russia,” Alexander Sternik, director of the Third Department of the CIS Countries at the Russian Foreign Ministry, told a Valdai Discussion Club conference.

The West is interested in gaining access to energy resources and transit potential of Central Asian states, as well as their proximity to Afghanistan, Iran, and China, Sternik stressed.

He was echoed by Fyodor Lukyanov, director of research at the Valdai Discussion Club, who noted that external players, who are not part of Central Asia, do their best to tear out individual parts of the region and use them in their own interests.

Central Asia has become a model and center of a multipolar world, to which other countries – the main centers of the new world – are adjacent. These are Russia, China, India, Iran, and Turkiye, Lukyanov pointed out.

More than 50 experts and political figures from India, Iran, Kazakhstan, China, Kyrgyzstan, Mongolia, Pakistan, Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan took part in the Valdai Club conference titled «Russia and Central Asia: Cooperation in a Multipolar World.»