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Blinken Holds Talks with Central Asian Nations in Wake of Ukraine Anniversary

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken attends a meeting with Kyrgyz Foreign Minister Jeenbek Kulubaev in Astana, Kazakhstan, February 28, 2023. (Reuters)
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken attends a meeting with Kyrgyz Foreign Minister Jeenbek Kulubaev in Astana, Kazakhstan, February 28, 2023. (Reuters)
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Blinken Holds Talks with Central Asian Nations in Wake of Ukraine Anniversary

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken attends a meeting with Kyrgyz Foreign Minister Jeenbek Kulubaev in Astana, Kazakhstan, February 28, 2023. (Reuters)
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken attends a meeting with Kyrgyz Foreign Minister Jeenbek Kulubaev in Astana, Kazakhstan, February 28, 2023. (Reuters)

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken arrived in Central Asia Tuesday to meet officials from all five former Soviet republics following the first anniversary of Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

Blinken's visit to the capitals of Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan is his first to the region as the Biden administration's top diplomat.

The trip comes just days after the Feb. 24 anniversary of the invasion of Ukraine, which has tested Moscow's influence in a region that also includes Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan.

Leaders in the region have been emboldened to stand up to Russia by their new-found leverage as Moscow looks to their markets and trade routes in a bid to circumvent Western sanctions.

Blinken will meet the foreign ministers of all five Central Asian states in Astana on Tuesday before traveling on to Tashkent, Uzbekistan.

US officials say the Biden administration has stepped up engagement with the region in an effort to demonstrate the benefits of US cooperation to countries facing economic fallout from the conflict to the west.

In Astana on Tuesday, Blinken met Kazakhstan's President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, who was re-elected in a landslide in November and has pushed back publicly against territorial claims made by Russian President Vladimir Putin in Ukraine.

"We have built very good and reliable long-term partnerships in so many strategically important areas like security, energy, trade and investments," Tokayev told Blinken as they met at the imposing presidential palace.

Blinken earlier told Foreign Minister Mukhtar Tileuberdi that Washington supports the sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity of Kazakhstan, which won independence from Moscow in 1991.

"Sometimes we just say those words, but they actually have real meaning and of course we know in this particular time they have even more resonance than usual," Blinken said in reference to Russia's invasion of Ukraine, also a former Soviet republic.

Russia and Kazakhstan share the world's longest continuous land border, prompting concern among some Kazakhs about the security of a country with the second-biggest ethnic Russian population among ex-Soviet republics after Ukraine.

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Russia Condemns ‘Irresponsible’ Talk of Nuclear Weapons for Ukraine

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov attends a press conference of Russian President Vladimir Putin speaks at the BRICS summit in Kazan, Russia October 24, 2024. (Reuters)
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov attends a press conference of Russian President Vladimir Putin speaks at the BRICS summit in Kazan, Russia October 24, 2024. (Reuters)
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Russia Condemns ‘Irresponsible’ Talk of Nuclear Weapons for Ukraine

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov attends a press conference of Russian President Vladimir Putin speaks at the BRICS summit in Kazan, Russia October 24, 2024. (Reuters)
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov attends a press conference of Russian President Vladimir Putin speaks at the BRICS summit in Kazan, Russia October 24, 2024. (Reuters)

Discussion in the West about arming Ukraine with nuclear weapons is "absolutely irresponsible", Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Tuesday, in response to a report in the New York Times citing unidentified officials who suggested such a possibility.

The New York Times reported last week that some unidentified Western officials had suggested US President Joe Biden could give Ukraine nuclear weapons before he leaves office.

"Several officials even suggested that Mr. Biden could return nuclear weapons to Ukraine that were taken from it after the fall of the Soviet Union. That would be an instant and enormous deterrent. But such a step would be complicated and have serious implications," the newspaper wrote.

Asked about the report, Peskov told reporters: "These are absolutely irresponsible arguments of people who have a poor understanding of reality and who do not feel a shred of responsibility when making such statements. We also note that all of these statements are anonymous."

Earlier, senior Russian security official Dmitry Medvedev said that if the West supplied nuclear weapons to Ukraine then Moscow could consider such a transfer to be tantamount to an attack on Russia, providing grounds for a nuclear response.

Ukraine inherited nuclear weapons from the Soviet Union after its 1991 collapse, but gave them up under a 1994 agreement, the Budapest Memorandum, in return for security assurances from Russia, the United States and Britain.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said last month that as Ukraine had handed over the nuclear weapons, joining NATO was the only way it could deter Russia.

The 33-month Russia-Ukraine war saw escalations on both sides last week, after Ukraine fired US and British missiles into Russia for the first time, with permission from the West, and Moscow responded by launching a new hypersonic intermediate-range missile into Ukraine.

Asked about the risk of a nuclear escalation, Peskov said the West should "listen carefully" to Putin and read Russia's newly updated nuclear doctrine, which lowered the threshold for using nuclear weapons.

Separately, Russian foreign intelligence chief Sergei Naryshkin said Moscow opposes simply freezing the conflict in Ukraine because it needs a "solid and long-term peace" that resolves the core reasons for the crisis.