Two weeks after taking over the Kremlin from his mentor Vladimir Putin, President Dmitry Medvedev flew to the Kazakh capital on his first official visit as head of the Russian state. Standing in the heart of central Asia, Mr Medvedev outlined a plank of a foreign policy that would see Russia develop stronger ties with, and broader influence over, the countries that line its outer borders.
"The time has come for ties to be intensified," he said at the time in late May, referring to Russia's ex-Soviet neighbours in the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). That goal has become all the stronger since Russia's five-day war with Georgia in August. The conflict, over Georgia's separatist enclaves of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, saw Russian troops pouring across borders for the first time since the fall of the Soviet Union.
