{"id":609,"date":"2024-11-06T03:20:30","date_gmt":"2024-11-06T03:20:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/lotus\/?p=609"},"modified":"2025-11-16T01:28:34","modified_gmt":"2025-11-16T01:28:34","slug":"why-kyrgyzstan-does-not-support-ukraine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/lotus\/2024\/11\/06\/why-kyrgyzstan-does-not-support-ukraine\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Kyrgyzstan Does Not Support Ukraine"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Karolis Margis ’26<\/em><\/p>\n

During my 2 month long stay in Kyrgyzstan I discussed many issues of great importance. Living in a host family provided ample opportunities for discussions. One topic was particularly interesting to me and the locals – Russia\u2019s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Two main narratives were predominant – the Western one and the Russian one. The Western narrative is familiar to many of us – Ukraine was invaded in 2014 after the fall of a pro-Russian Yanukovich regime, which culminated in a full-scale invasion in 2022. While many young and liberal students in Bishkek, the capital city of Kyrgyzstan, supported this view, another opinion was much louder. Many, especially older people, expressed the view that Russia\u2019s invasion was a necessity in order to defend its security zone. They saw the supposed threat of NATO expansion as a good justification for invading Ukraine. To many of us, this view might seem peculiar, unjustified or even unhinged. Yet, to many Kyrgyz it is the US that they see as the biggest source of evil in the world. \u201cLook at Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya – wherever the Americans come there is bound to be chaos and destruction\u201d my host father told me during one of our dinners.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

This view was not particularly popular among us, the students of the Russian program in Bishkek. However, during the stay we saw what might have led the Kyrgyz locals to adopt such views. Firstly, Russia is a major trading partner of Kyrgyzstan. Due to its historic economic ties, Kyrgyzstan is highly dependent on Russian oil and gas. Moreover, about a million Kyrgyz expats live and work in Russia in order to support their families back home. This necessitates the Kyrgyz government\u2019s friendly attitude towards Russia. Secondly, Russian is spoken and understood by a majority of Kyrgyz population. While in Bishkek, I encountered only a handful of people who didn\u2019t speak any Russian. Moreover, many Kyrgyz families send their kids to schools where Russian is the language of instruction. This creates a fertile soil for Russian propaganda. The TV news that my host family would watch were always Russian state channels echoing Putin\u2019s narrative at any given opportunity. Lastly, there is the enduring sentiment of Soviet nostalgia. Seeing the Soviet Era as the heyday of their country, many in Kyrgyzstan consider Russians a brotherly nation\u00a0 which brought much progress and investment into Kyrgyzstan. The fall of the Soviet Union brought severe economic turmoil to the country and the US was seen as the culprit. Hence, to this day an anti-American sentiment is prevalent in the country, leading the people to support Russia over Ukraine.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Some younger people I met at the American University of Central Asia in Bishkek, were more supportive of Ukraine. They said they disagreed with the stance of their government and wished their country would move to a more Western-oriented political direction. This might be a sign of change. Yet, such change might need decades to manifest.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Karolis Margis ’26 During my 2 month long stay in Kyrgyzstan I discussed many issues of great importance. Living in a host family provided ample opportunities for discussions. One topic was particularly interesting to me and the locals – Russia\u2019s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.\u00a0\u00a0 Two main narratives were predominant – the Western one and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1825,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-609","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2024-2025"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/lotus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/609","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/lotus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/lotus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/lotus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1825"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/lotus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=609"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/lotus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/609\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":611,"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/lotus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/609\/revisions\/611"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/lotus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=609"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/lotus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=609"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/lotus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=609"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}