Editor’s Picks

The Semipalatinsk Treaty at 20: Enduring Logic of Nuclear-Free Central Asia

By Dauren Aben on 9 September 2026

Twenty years ago today, representatives of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan gathered in Semipalatinsk, now Semey, to sign a treaty that would make Central Asia the first nuclear-weapon-free zone in the Northern Hemisphere. It was also the first such zone established in a region where nuclear weapons had...