At the end of 2018, President of Kazakhstan Nursultan Nazarbayev replaced the country’s minister of foreign affairs, just a few days before the expiration of Kazakhstan’s non-permanent membership in the UN Security Council (UNSC). The appointment of Beibut Atamkulov, the former Minister of Defense and Aerospace Industry, as a new head of the country’s diplomatic service in-stead of career diplomat Kairat Abdrakhmanov was quite unexpected.
Asset Ordabayev is a junior research fellow at the Eurasian Institute of the International H.A Yassawi Kazakh-Turkish University. He holds a BA in International Relations from the KarSU (Karahanda) from 2012. In 2014, he earned his Masters degree in International Relations the Kazak National University (Almaty). From 2014 to 2017 he worked at the Institute of World Economy and Politics as a foreign policy expert. The main research interests are the geopolitical processes on the Eurasian continent within the framework of the development of transport infrastructure, as well as the ongoing proces