Kazakhstan

name

Etymology: Borrowed from Russian Казахста́н (Kazaxstán). Analyzable as Kazakh + -stan.

1. A country in Central Asia and Eastern Europe. Official name: Republic of Kazakhstan.

   “At a signing ceremony in the Kazakh capital, Astana, on May 29, the presidents of Russia, Belarus, and Kazakhstan ratified the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU) into existence. An EEU modeled on the European Union was first mooted back in 1994 by Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev, but took off only after his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, seized upon its potential as a Moscow-centered, Asia-oriented alternative to the EU.”

   “Longtime NASA astronaut Don Pettit, who has ventured to space four times, returned to Earth on Saturday night from the International Space Station. Pettit, who turned 70 on Sunday, landed at 9:20 p.m. ET in a Soyuz spacecraft with Roscosmos cosmonauts Alexey Ovchinin and Ivan Vagner near Zhezkazgan, Kazakhstan, after a seven-month stay aboard the orbiting laboratory.”