Kazakhstan is Central Asia's geographical giant. The world's ninth largest country, it stretches from northern Siberian taiga forest, across barren steppe to the Caspian Sea in the south-west and the towering Tien Shan mountains in the south-east.
Capital: Astana
Population: 16.5 million
Leader: President Nursultan Nazarbayev.
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The Caspian holds vast oil and gas reserves, and Western oil majors have endured the corruption endemic to Kazakh business and politics in the hope of big profits.
Kazhakstan's Russian population is dwindling and complains of discrimination. Thousands of ethnic Germans, deported from Russia to Kazakhstan by Josef Stalin in the 1940s, accepted Germany's invitation to return there after the Soviet Union collapsed.