2022 has been a momentous year for Kazakhstan. In January the country’s reputation as an island of stability in Central Asia was rocked by a sudden wave of violent protests, during which the government resorted to the unprecedented deployment of a CSTO (Collective Security Treaty Organisation) peacekeeping force to help it survive. Just months later,Russia’s invasion of Ukraine introduced new tensions in relations between Moscow and Nur-Sultan. Joanna Lillis has reported extensively on these historic events and will brief the Society on how they have changed modern Kazakhstan.
Joanna Lillis is an Almaty-based journalist whose reporting on Central Asia has appeared in The Economist, The Guardian, Eurasianet and other news outlets. She is an alumna of Leeds and Bradford universities, the author of Dark Shadows: inside the secret world of Kazakhstan(2018) and gave a well-informed and insightful talk to the Society in February 2021 on Kazakhstan ‘after’ Nazarbayev.