Kazakhstan

Kazakhstan, officially the Republic of Kazakhstan, is a contiguous transcontinental country in Central Asia, with its smaller part west of the Ural River in Eastern Europe. Kazakhstan is the world's largest landlocked country by land area and the ninth largest country in the world. It has borders with (clockwise from the north) Russia, China, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan, and also adjoins a large part of the Caspian Sea. The capital is Astana, where it was moved from Almaty in 1997.

The territory of Kazakhstan was conquered by Genghis Khan in the 13th Century. When his ruling family fought for power, power generally switched back to the nomads. By the 16th century, the Kazakhs emerged as a distinct group, divided into three jüz (ancestor branches occupying specific territories). The Russians began advancing into the Kazakh steppe in the 18th century, and by the mid-19th century all of Kazakhstan was part of the Russian Empire. Following the 1917 Russian Revolution, and subsequent civil war, the territory of Kazakhstan was reorganized several times before becoming the Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic in 1936, a part of the Soviet Union.

Kazakhstan was the last of the Soviet republics to declare independence following the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991; the current President, Nursultan Nazarbayev, has been leader of the country since 1990.

Kazakhstan in Supervolcano
Some six years after the eruption of the Yellowstone Supervolcano, Russia, suffering from harsh winters and a complete failure of agriculture, invaded both Ukraine and Kazakhstan, which were somewhat better off. The Russians used the fact that both countries had historically been under Russian rule as a thin casus belli. Both countries reached out to NATO, but the response was limited at best. The U.S. Secretary of State expressed disapproval of the invasion. Russia effectively told the USA that the invasion was none of its business.

The invasion did not go as hoped. In addition to the cost on the ground, Kazakh special forces were able to infiltrate Russia and blow-up two nuclear power plants. While the explosions did not cause a meltdown on the level of Chernobyl, they did raise the background radiation.