Many Kyrgyz resent the uniform reproach that has come from abroad.
The "Kyrgyz think the Russian invasion [of Crimea] is good, that Russia is battling fascists.
But in recent weeks Kyrgyz villagers, angered by disputes with Tajik border guards, have on several occasions blocked the only road that connects the enclave to the rest of Tajikistan.When tensions rise, politicians in distant capitals thump their chests and send more soldiers eg the Kyrgyz spetsnaz billeted in the village school at Ak-Sai, who have been there since the shootings in January.
Putin himself laughed off all the speculation when he returned to the stage yesterday, meeting Kyrgyz president Almazbek Atambayev in St Petersburg.
In June 2010, inter-ethnic rioting involving Kyrgyz and Uzbeks erupted in southern provinces, leaving hundreds dead.
In its 85-year history, Voice of Russia – known in Soviet times as Radio Moscow – broadcast in Russian and a variety of foreign languages, but it wasn't until 2008 that it started broadcasting in some of the languages of the newly independent countries of the former USSR – specifically Armenian, Kyrgyz and Moldovan.
Nevertheless, the Kyrgyz som has fallen by 12% against the dollar this year, the Tajik somoni by about 5%.
Kyrgyz officials are arresting prominent Uzbek political figures.
Ethnic Kyrgyz say the Uzbeks started the violence, and that Kyrgyz were killed in pogroms, too.
It was sent to Nadezhda Lesnichenko's sixth-grade class when she was teaching them history in Frunze, then the capital of the Kyrgyz Soviet Socialist Republic, in the 1960s.Ms Lesnichenko (pictured) was approaching pension age then.
Tajik officials, meanwhile, say the road is being built on contested territory, and complain that it would allow the Kyrgyz to blockade a Tajik enclave that is home to 30,000 people.
