US Secretary of State Antony Blinken will visit Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan next week, the State Department said Thursday, courting former Soviet republics uneasy over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The trip will come days after the one-year anniversary of the war in Ukraine, which has received billions of dollars in US weapons and economic support to help fight back the Russian invaders.
With the exception of Belarus, whose strongman Alexander Lukashenko is a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, former Soviet republics outside of Russia have declined to rally to Moscow’s cause despite close economic and security links.
Creating nervousness, Putin invaded Ukraine in part as…
