The Kyrgyz tried their hand at democracy. They had as legit elections as they could a few years back. Once the new government came into power it hunted down opponents of the old government and charged them with corruption. This ofcourse alienated the opponents supporters so you have this merry go round of political elite chasing each other & pointing the finger. It is Beijing vs Moscow here. The two deal with puppet states differently, China couldn't care about political affiliation as long as on the world stage you support their cause. So they pour money into the country. Moscow on the other hand wants to have as much political clout as possible. The are the most corrupt places on earth to, the corruption is mind boggling. The Kyrgyz sadly don't enjoy the wealth of having Gas and oil like the other Stans do so they are the poorest and at the helm of the two super powers on their doorstep.

The Stans are proper old school Soviet though. The President of Kazakstan resigned but he still controls the country so much so they changed the capitals name from Astana to Nur-Sultan, naming it after the ex-President NurSultan Nazarbayev.

Then there is Turkmenistan, an absolute batshit crazy dictatorship. I worked in energy, we know just how rich Turkmenistan is with it's gas, how easy it is to extract etc. Turkmenistan could be Switzerland, Norway level rich. Yet they before they had TurkmenBashi as a dictator. He changed the name of the months to his parents name. Turkmenbashi is also a title he gave himself which means 'head of the Turkmen'. He at first wanted to call himself Ataturk but yeah that wouldn't have gone down well. He died and was replaced by his dentist Gurbangulu. He banned women from changing their hair colour. People can only drive white cars. Their are no hospitals outside of the capital. There is a 11pm curfew on foreigners all the time. Smoking is banned I think or was once banned. Just plenty of wacky shit. The capital is full of golden statues. The President is also a DJ.