Central Asia as a Priority Gepoltic Region Post-Soviet Space: Geographical Analysis

Russia and the countries of Central Asia (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan) are considered in the article as part of the post-Soviet space, which is argued by their connectedness in the military-political, social, economic spheres and the solution of territorial problems. This conjugation shapes Russia's geopolitical interests in the region. Based on the idea that the properties of the territory affect the policy of the state located on it, the author set the task of identifying those properties of the territory of the countries of the region that influence the formation of Russia's geopolitical interests in it in each of the listed areas. Thus, military-political interests are considered through the prism of countries' membership in the Collective Security Treaty and the Collective Security Treaty Organization; social interests - from the point of view of the processes of de-Russification, economic migration, radicalization of Islam; territorial interests are studied in the context of the conflict that arose after the collapse of the USSR and associated with the need for a legal definition of the passage of state borders (with China, in the Caspian Sea, in the zone of ethnic enclaves); economic interests are considered in many aspects, both in the context of the influence of continentality and transit status of countries on the functioning of transport systems in the region, and in terms of the distribution of Russian direct investment by country and, in general, economic assistance to Russia. Taken together, this made it possible to highlight the geographical factors that determine the significance of the region in Russia's foreign policy and its position in the main document regulating the regional priorities of the country's foreign policy - the "Foreign Policy Concept of the Russian Federation" (2023).