For Russia, Trouble Could Be Brewing in Central Asia

History teaches that wars have unpredictable consequences and diverse knock-on effects far beyond the battlefield. The US Civil War proved momentous for, of all places, Central Asia. Russia tightened its grip on the region, using it to replace the cotton supply cut off from America’s slave states.

Central Asia is again seeing the knock-on effects of conflict, this time from Vladimir Putin’s war on Ukraine. The slide in Russia’s economic prospects may leave millions of Central Asians inside Russia unemployed, hammering remittance flows back to their countries.