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The failure of regionalism in Central Asia is a puzzle. Whereas almost all world regions have seen a rise of regional organisations since the end of the Cold War, attempts to establish durable regional cooperation among Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan proofed unsuccessful. Although some of the Central Asian countries participate in wider regional organisations like the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), the genuine Central Asian Cooperation Organisation (CACO) was dissolved in 2005. Given the cultural, economic and political similarities between the five Central Asian countries, this lack of a regional organisation is surprising. In contrast to previous work, this paper argues that the failure of regionalism in Central Asia is not so much due to domestic political factors, but more to the extra-regional economic dependence of the regional economies and the impact of external powers within Central Asia. Challenged by the rise of China, Russia uses the EAEU in order to preserve its hegemonic influence over the former Soviet Republics. By joining the Russian dominated EAEU, Central Asia's regional power Kazakhstan enjoys economic benefits which outweigh the potential gains of Central Asian cooperation within CACO by far. Consequently, Kazakhstan follows its extra-regional interests in closer cooperation with Russia at the cost of regional cooperation with its Central Asian neighbours. As a result, the Central Asian countries are unable to build up a unified regional block in relation to extra-regional powers like China or Russia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: COVID-19 pandemic has presented extreme challenges to developing countries across the world. The aim of this paper was to provide estimates for current development COVID-19 pandemic in the Post-Soviet states and forecast potential best and worst scenarios for spread of this deadly infection. Methods: The data on COVID-19 cases extracted from official governmental sources until April 18, 2020. A modified SEIR (Susceptible-Exposed-Infected-Recovered) modelling was used to plot the pandemic outbreak in 10 Post-Soviet states and forecasting over the period of 10, 30 and 60 days. The optimal measures (best-scenario) and suboptimal measures (worst-scenarios) of potential spread of COVID-19 in these countries were estimated. Results: It was estimated that Armenia and Azerbaijan have reached their peaks, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, and Uzbekistan are expected to reach their peaks in the early May-2020), with comparatively low cases of COVID-19 in the best-case scenario. In contrast, Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine would likely see the outbreaks with the largest number of COVID-19 cases amongst the studied Post-Soviet States in the worst-scenario during the next 30 and 60 days. Conclusion: Governmental response was shown to be as an important determining factor responsible for the development of COVID-19 epidemic in Post-Soviet states. The current protection rates should be maintained to reduce active cases during upcoming 30 and 60 days. The estimated possible scenarios based on the proposed model can potentially be used by healthcare professionals from each studied Post-Soviet States as well as others to improve plans to contain the current and future epidemic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]