 Good morning ladies and gentlemen and welcome to Eurasia for this morning. I'm Nairi Woods and I'm Dean of the Blavatnik School of Government at Oxford University. Eurasia is some 35% of the Earth's surface. It's five billion people. It's a large amount of the world's energy. It's a former Soviet sphere of influence and now a growing China sphere of influence and engagement and right between those two great powers sits Mongolia and we're very lucky this morning to have to kick us off a short comment by the president of Mongolia, President Batuga, if I could invite you to make a brief comment to kick off today's panel. Thank you. Good morning everybody. Mongolia actively participates in the World Economic Forum and I'm very glad to participate in this session of Strategic Outlook in Asia. And as you mentioned just now, the Eurasia contains five billion people. So I do think that we will discuss more on how to bring development to the people of this continent. For Mongolia we are located in between the Russia and China, two big neighbors and two big cars. We connect the Eurasia and during the past years we have built around 6,000 kilometers of highways and 1,000 kilometers of railways which connects to the Eurasia and it constitutes the connectivity of the Eurasia. And I would like to propose here that we would cooperate further on connecting the Central Asian plateau and the Mongolia further in the future and I'm very happy to participate in this session and I would like to wish you a success to the discussion. Thank you, Mr President. Thank you. Well let's jump straight in. I have on my left and I'll introduce each panelist as I ask them an opening question. President Ilham Aliyev, the President of the Republic of Azerbaijan. As we said, Eurasia now has these great powers, Russia and China on each side. As President of Azerbaijan, who do you call first, Moscow or Beijing? Baku. Yeah our policy is friendly towards our neighbors but at the same time our national interests first. Therefore all the achievements which we enjoy during the years of independence we achieved due to the commitment of our people to our independence and to the fact that we've managed to implement very serious reforms in political and economic area and our achievements are also reflected in Davos World Economic Forum's annual assessment. We have a very high level of development in infrastructure and as far as roads construction and quality of roads is concerned we are number 27 in the world. Fantastic. I was interested to see that you've refreshed your government. You've brought in young technocrats. Yes, exactly. The government was changed. New people were invited to the government well educated with modern vision because as I said publicly many times in 21st century we cannot achieve success with the vision of 20th century and therefore the new people were brought not only to the government but also to the presidential administration which also was changed largely and next month we will have early parliamentary elections. The aim of that was also to give opportunity to people to select those people whom they trust and the parliament I'm sure after election will be an important part of the continuation of the reforms. And for Azerbaijanis who want their lives to get better what do you hope this new government will deliver to them what will they see over the next year or two that that's different? I think that in the previous times we largely invested in the infrastructure projects therefore today with respect to access to electricity according again to Davos Forum Azerbaijanis number two. Gasification level in Azerbaijan is 96 percent. We've built 16,000 kilometers of roads and more than 3,000 schools and 700 hospitals but that was part of the state investment. What we need now we need a new approach in the governance good governance transparency accountability bringing the criteria of our life and living standards closer to the standards of European Union and I think this is possible this is achievable because we have a strong political support again I want to come to the assessment of Davos Forum which ranks Azerbaijan government's strategic vision as number 10 and government's ability to provide stability number 11 in the world. So the new government will concentrate on major challenge which is growing population therefore our economic growth must be in line with growth of population during the time of independence we came from 7 million to 10 million people so it needs additional infrastructure it needs additional food supply and our population grows every year more than 100,000 that means we need at least 100,000 jobs annually and it's not easy therefore the government will address that we will try to keep poverty as low as it is today it's below 5% and also we have a long strategy of reduction of the foreign direct debt which is today very low it's 17% of GDP but our target is to bring it down to 10% of GDP and of course keeping inflation low as it was last year 2.5% and the income of people must always be ahead of inflation as well as job creation must be ahead of demographic growth. I read that a third of the population of Central Asia is now under 15 that's one third of the population under 15 if we look at youth in every other continent of the world we see them on the streets they're demanding more voice they're used to having more voice for that and you've just explained that in your country a growing number are those young people yeah um what will you know what would you say if they want to come out on the streets and and demand more voice we will listen to what they want but the fact is that in Azerbaijan youth is not in the streets youth is in the universities at school youth is in the startup business youth is actively involved in governmental issues we have launched a very huge volunteer movement and tens of thousands of people have been trained in the public services sector as volunteers and then we recruit these people those who have good results to the governmental institutions and frankly speaking when we see in different parts of the world youth on the streets it's because of dissatisfaction dissatisfaction with their life they lost trust trust in their governments the governments use populistic slogans to come to power and then cannot deliver what they promised actually they lie and the main reason for that is irresponsibility of politicians because we see in many countries not only in europe but in other places that one government comes immediately the head of government is under fire people elect him or her and then within one year he or her loses all the credibility that's because the promises were given which were not been possible to implement in Azerbaijan we always keep our word we never say something we cannot deliver and year after year living standards of our people is better thank you president aliev what about you do you have a question for president aliev let me take one question from the audience question he's laid out a rich agenda of what he's seeking to achieve as president no question you weren't expecting me to ask you but i'm going to ask you after each speaker so i want you to think about what you'd like to ask today's speakers um let's let's move before we come back to the president to kairat kelim betov the governor of the astana international financial center authority in kazakhstan educated as three of the four panelists were at mosco state university so big thumbs up for mosco state university but um governor you were also educated in the united kingdom and in the united states do you wish you'd learn mandarin and also being educated in beijing yeah i think so let me put the the other way since we've gotten dependence like 30 years ago the kazakhstan has a multi-vectoral foreign policy so means that we are friendly to all big superpowers globally and at the same time we have a very close relationship with our neighbors so with russia armenia kyrgyzstan and belarus we create eurasian economic union with we are part of the shanghai cooperation organization we are part of the turkic council with Azerbaijan kyrgyzstan and turkey so we're trying to be part of the much bigger coalition just than one and at the same time if you ask me what is it structural with trade global trade of kazakhstan is 50 percent is european union so it's like in order to avoid any stereotypes in just 20 percent russia and 20 percent china i think now having in mind that we have a kind of new structure of the global trade and especially after the first phase of the negotiation after the trade disputes between united states and china i think we have all to understand that we now have a kind of the new reality and we have to know and to know how to work with new reality uh having in mind that i am a governor of astana international financial center part of our mandate is to be the regional hub for the belton road initiative in central asia so it means that we have to know how to work with our chinese colleagues very well and where is it most uncomfortable being between china and russia i think the most uncomfortable when we have a much bigger tension between us and china that and again i think that the recent speech of president trump and the how do we see the the new trade deals or the new model of the global trade policy uh even the country's disagree on something so they figure out something they have to be agreed and we are moving forward we really like that it's starting kind of common understanding between us and china and we are strongly believes that later on all of these sanctions like as a rule will uh time would be uh over and i think now we have to be much more closely be integrated like a market to each other and and are you hopeful that that's or no let me let me put this differently what impact does it have on your country when china and the united states fight yeah i think uh when we have this kind of changes of the structure between ua trade of between us and china and we see that it's it affected like a slowdown to the chinese economy always these sanctions against for example countries in eurasian economic union is also slowdowns our economy which is not really good and i think we have to think more constructive way how we should build the global economy and but does it have political or social effects yeah i think kazakhstan is lucky actually last 20 years i think we did a great job in terms of the social and economic reform in terms of the gdp per capita with russia we are leading economies in a former soviet union area and i think that because we actually like in terms of the vast commodities so it was a tremendous economic growth in our countries so it doesn't mean that necessarily that it should be continued the same way and now we're thinking how to really to move to more sustainable economic growth in new reality when the super cycle for the commodities is over i've heard you speak eloquently about connectivity right one of the places where a lot of the world is feeling the discomfort between the united states and china is on technology on huawei on 5g and on this this this sense that that for all the rest of the countries in the world we're going to have to make uncomfortable choices do you do you feel that in in kazakhstan yeah i think first of all i would like to remind that the central asia is still landlocked country and physical connectivity means a lot for for the countries in the region we now making a great job in terms of it to connect central asia to the to the rest of the world in different dimensions like west and east because the stan recently started to build a new railways a new dry port in corgos in a border with china which means that we now connected in a free dimension through russian federation to western european ports through seaport aktau and till azerbaijan and further georgia turkey to west a eastern european ports and through turkmenistan and iran to the gcc countries so we start to be unlocked first of all uh but the digital connectivity nowadays is not everything i think the uh the physical the digital connectivity of financial connectivity is also very much important we we working on this and i think so in these terms uh we don't we we want to avoid any kind of dilemmas that we should we should take amazon or or whoever or or someone else i think that what the kazakhstan is will try to also to be part of all of these big uh alliances technological alliances at the same time we have to develop our own capacity so but the entire idea is like so let me back to maybe to the global agenda is the region of central asia should be connected because we now see that it's a big interest between european union and asian countries especially china to create land bridge between each other and i think we the countries in our in our part of the world would benefit from this thank you your questions for president for governor kelin betov does anyone have a question for him he's he's laid out for you how kazakhstan is becoming more and more linked but also how it's affected by china u.s uh frictions any questions to you now i clearly ask because i'm being comprehensive and clear um um we'll come back to some of the issues that are being raised about um geostrategically what's going to happen in the region but let me move and introduce tatiana valovaya who is now director general of the united nations in other words heading the united nations office in geneva but before that uh tatiana you were playing a very important role in kind of russia's vision of a eurasian economic area what what was your triumph on that what was your what do you feel was your biggest success on that well my triumph and here i see lots of people who participated in our common triumph mr kelin betov mrs uh jana right jana was some others people was establishing the eurasian economic union which was established on the first of january 2015 and we just celebrated their fifth anniversary that was a great trans because it was the result of practically two decades of work of on eurasian economic integration it was not just we have built the union overnight or over two years it was a work of mistakes made of different path explored lessons learned for 20 years so that was the biggest triumph and what was the biggest lesson that you learned the biggest lesson i think was that we have to learn from the experience of other original economic organizations of course european union for us was and still is the role model and we learned lots of lessons from the european uh experience both positive lessons but also negative lessons but one lesson for us was that we shouldn't always copy other original structures we can uh and should use some innovative approaches for example for many many years practically for two decades there was a dilemma for us we understood that if we want to have original economic organization at a high level we need to build a supranational organization like european union for us that many newly independent states we have to delegate our sovereignty and it was a big political issue and then one day we realized that delegating sovereignty to a supranational body is not losing your own sovereignty but it's pulling your national sovereignty and becoming more influential and for us that was a very important lesson at the same time we didn't use the european uh uh experience in decision making and we decided that in our union in spite of the different size of our economies for example take Belarus or Armenia or kyrgyzstan small economies or bigger economies like Kazakhstan or Russia all are equals and decision making is one country one voice and it was a very difficult decision to make but that was exactly one which made us uh possible to create the union and for the union to develop how did you persuade countries that by pulling sovereignty they would be stronger this is an argument that lost out in the united kingdom where i work at oxford so how did you persuade countries how did you persuade presidents like those we have here that that how do you persuade them that this is a good idea you know uh i think differently from the situation in the european union when we started the integration process we had much more support from the grassroots from the population than from the elite that i think is different from the situation in united kingdom because uh people were still remembering the soviet union they still remembered economic cooperation regional economic cooperation and they suffered from lots of ties which have been broken so people wanted to live and work together they did not want to live in one country but they wanted to be able to travel around to be able to work all around without uh any problems and we had these uh support from the population but from the elite we had really to sit down and discuss and say for example we understand that in the international arena very few countries are absolutely sovereign were all parts of the global system were all parts of global agreements so we are delegating our um sovereignty as it is it's not possible to be absolutely independent in your decision making you have to take into account the views the situations the economic weight of your partners so when you are creating regional economic organization you are giving an opportunity for smaller nations for their voice to be heard on the international arena i'll give you a very simple example i worked a lot with the united nations before i came to jeniva and i was very proud that duration economic union in the year 2017 was the first and i think still the only regional economic organization which presented in new york on the political level on sustainable development its report on achieving a sustainable development goals the first regional economic organization and it was kyrgyz a very small central asian country which presented this report on behalf of the union so i think that shows that really small countries because they are part of regional economic organizations have more possibilities to be heard and uh seen in the international arena thank you president ali of can i bring that back to you do young people in azerbaijan do you do you think they share that vision this aspiration to be part of a regional organization and delegate sovereignty to that regional organization is their grassroots support for that idea in azerbaijan i don't think so i think the main idea and the main ideology of azerbaijan including the young generation is sovereignty independence and reliance on our own resources and me as a president one of my targets was to transform azerbaijan into a self-sufficient country that the country does not depend on anyone in other words economic independence was main priority because this is a foundation for political independence of course different countries have different agenda economies of different countries is more vulnerable that others as far as azerbaijan is concerned once again our geographical location is very advantages plus we invested largely into creation of modern infrastructure second as you mentioned our generation is very young and we have extra labor resources and very creative and of course we are reaching natural resources oil and gas which create energy security for us and therefore our relations with our neighboring countries and the big number of partners are based on mutual interest and plus in every issue related to our presence in that other international body we look at the pragmatic side what it will give to us if it gives us more economic incentives more opportunities for business more stability more security of course we are considering that and we are members of a number of international institutions one of them is non-alignment movement terrific can i can i take that back excuse me friend to Tatiana Volovaya so if the union would give azerbaijan more economic investment more opportunity for growth could it would it what's the argument that you might make to the people of azerbaijan you know one very important lessons we learned from the european union you should know you should never go for aggressive marketing you should never go for quick enlargement only those country who really want to join the integration should join and whenever a country raises an issue and it was the head of delegations on two accession treaties and we try to be very very pragmatic and we even raise this are you sure you want to join the union do you know the consequences for your economic policies do you realize this and this if you are sure then you should proceed so i think that your ratio in the economic union like all other organization should not press anybody to join and second i think i think it's very important as i said to change the perception joining regional economic organization is not losing your sovereignty you are delegating certain economic powers to supranational body but this body is still under the control of the nation states they do it voluntary and they have still the mechanism of control over these bodies so there is a different perception it's not about that well everybody is done somewhere thank you governor can i also clarify just in terms of the perception of your region economic union but i like what the president ali have just mentioned that i think the two important dimension is like first is for each country is a national interest so we now we see that it should be national interest of each country so national interest means we can own economic policy creating of job places supporting the local producer so each country has their own agenda the second what the president ali mentioned is a pragmatic policy so we have to be all pragmatic i mean and having in mind that we have a like a past as we've been in previously in the different historical period now when we've got independence we are very pragmatic we're trying to focus on on the uh an unlaunchment of our markets so we for example in Kazakhstan we have a population 18 million people one eight and it's a very small market to develop your own economies we should join to some bigger trade platform and Eurasian economic union is about delegating only trade policy it's not more so it's at least if in i can say even it's first of all it's Eurasian economic union and economic means like custom union plus plus plus plus in different dimension for freedom of labor of capitals it's easier for our business to to think about their strategy if they see the access to the market this is first the second we have a bilateral relationship Russia and Kazakhstan so let me talk about our countries we have a common we have a common border which is a modern 7 000 kilometers this is the biggest dry border in the world bigger than us and between us and Canada you can imagine and this is access to us through the russian transport system to the western european ports to the to european markets through different let's say pipelines railways roads and i think it's fair when we have a let's say the relationship strategic relationship which should be between our neighborhood thank you very much let me bring in Andrey Kostin who is chairman of the vtb bank and well known to all of you as a regular at Davos in 2018 the united states announced sanctions on a number of russians and you were one of those um what does that feel like and how does that shape your your your view of the united states and its allies thank you very much i'm glad that in spite of all this i'm coming to davos for the 25th year now and it's out of 50 and of course i'm not now able to travel to washington new york which allows me to spend more time in baku in orful done but on a more serious note i would say that of course no one can be pleased when the sanctions imposed on him and particularly when you feel that they completely unjustified i was put on the list as a senior government official responsible for ukraine syria hacking and undermining american democracy for the last 28 years as far as i remember i've been a banker and i'm running the joint stock bank and i always develop extremely good relationship with american banks i was friendly with all the major ceo's and i was very supportive and we had a lot of transactions together in russia and you know we still enjoy a very good relationship between our organizations but unfortunately i have to cut off my direct contact with the with american ceo's and you know in spite of this fact i would say that i have no hard feelings towards america or even american administration and i wish mr trump every success uh in in in his impeachment saga because i also feel that it is unjustified i very much remember the meeting in davos in august 2017 that's a business advisory council in august when mr elgore made a speech only seven months after the inauguration mr trump and he said we would impeach mr trump either for russia or for money laundering or for insanity i asked a question why not to start vice versa why you start with russia start with insanity it would be much much probably easy but the smile of the history that's starting with russia they're finishing with ukraine now and so i think it's just pro my opinion just as groundless as any accusation of mr trump having any special relationship with russia which is the instigation completely failed nobody is now trying to remember about this in america so no hard feelings very friendly approached america i like america it's a great country but they've got there i think domestic mainly political problems and we don't expect any change of heart unless unless those those issues are sorted out inside um united states then we very much hope then they will be in the position to build a a more practical line towards russia and we'll have better relationship because nowadays politicians prefer not to say that but we are at the state of the cold war that's that's that's the fact of life so so picking up that um you've been coming to davos for 25 years 25 years ago did you imagine that there would be a sino russian rapprochement of the kind that we're now seeing now of course so all through all these 25 years we had the different kind of uh interest to russia in the first time i came in 1996 when in russia it is said that the fate of russia was decided in davos because all the major all the largest businessman met in davos and decided to support mr yeltsin at the same time was a great fun to see the leader of the russian communist party mr zhuganov walking here along the uh you know um promenade uh and showing uh you know that he was the real candidate and he at that time everybody thought that he would become a new president of russia but then of course we saw mr putin coming to davos mr medvedev twice unfortunately nowadays i i think we russia should be better represented in davos and speak more to the international community but of course at the time of at the beginning of this year of of this century and we couldn't imagine that uh in 2020 we will be at such state of poor relationship between russia and united states particularly in russia and europe as well but tell me about the relationship with china you've said you know you've had to put on hold some of your relationships with american banks what about chinese banks are you are you working with them more i'm not saying that we we put on hold a relationship with american banks normal business as usual within the scope of uh um or regulatory sanctions imposed by european and america but but they are they are not preventive from working together uh they concerns only some limited areas of cooperation without chinese you know the thing that that sanctions are mainly effective in the financial sector and the threat of the so-called secondary sanctions uh they they that's a fear for for all the banks and for the chinese by the way for europeans much more than for americans americans banks they they've got a direct line to ofak and it's much easy for them to to clear the the problem so we feel that uh sometimes the job is easily done with american banks rather than with chinese for example or or europeans that's the fact of life so the american sanctions actually make it harder for you to work with chinese banks it is it is but as i said the sanctions uh maybe not everybody knows the so-called sectoral sanctions imposed on russian leading banks they uh relate only to two areas specific we cannot borrow money from the western from american investors for more than two weeks and we can't sell them new shares that's it all other operations are allowed they're not restricted so it doesn't of course it does create of course the not a very favorable atmosphere to our investment and russian but on the other hand it doesn't prevent us from working with with including american banks or on on different uh on different uh in different areas including selling bonds and and you know working on the russian stock market and this kind of thing we've heard from the other four speakers this morning about eurasia is russia part of eurasia do you do you describe yourself as eurasian yes very much though and of course we uh 30 years ago we we we were one country and we were a country one country for for modern century and there's a lot of common between us and and and we would definitely feel i know personally i think we are eurasians but russia always was between europe and and and asia you know hundred years ago russian elite was speaking only french uh and couldn't even speak some some russian sometimes but nowadays you know you looked five years ago we looked at for example um maybe not a different area ukraine but it was funny to see how ukrainian cabinet was speaking russian because it was the only language which could we could keep them together so we we are of course we don't feel very much difference when when i talk to my to my friend with the kalembet of another you know people in other countries we are to a very big extent of the same origin and don't forget that five million russians living in in south and cocos in central asia and more than three million people from central asia and south and cocos work inside russia and actually transferring about ten billion dollars a year to the native country so we still have very close russia is still number one number two trading partner for for most of these eight eight eight countries maybe with exception of azerbaijan but we agreed with mr president to improve this and to increase russian bilateral economic cooperation so yes we are and in those countries you know the the president was talking about the fierce sense of independence in his country hard fought so it is true that that russia controlled a lot of these countries previously but it no longer does no how does russia step carefully on that and and how does it avoid feeling like the colonial overlord well i think there's a lot of discussions and comments here that russia or putin wants to reestablish the soviet union it is just impossible no matter who wants what it's impossible to restore the soviet union we for 30 years there is a eight or nine together with russia independent countries with their own you know elites with own presidents and we just what we want is actually two things develop maybe to restore to a certain extent cooperation and integration with these countries and secondly we don't want these to be a territory for particularly military competition between united states china and russia and of course we don't want to see those countries to be involved in any you know military military operation or military stance against russia like like having the american military bases or this kind of thing or joining the nato and and inviting nato troops like georgia for example is is planning to do so that that's our vested interest in providing security in the region uh because we want to feel secure ourselves before we close i'm now going to come to you for questions from the audience and then to come back to the panelists and ask each of you for one bright hope for the next year in your country and or in your region or if not a bright hope your worst nightmare that might occur this coming year questions from you are there any questions for today's panelists no you've all you're all in agreement any any suggestions comments then let's come back to the panel and ask what is your bright hope and or your worst nightmare for the region president aliyev i think the most important now especially taking into account the regional situation and new emerging uh conflict zones is regional stability we don't have internal risks in the country whether it's political risks or economic risks country stable development is sustainable we have a very broad agenda or free forms which are in the face of implementation which will create better opportunities for our people the main concern and uh the main potential nightmare would be aggravation of tension beyond our borders and for that unfortunately we are not responsible and we cannot to full degree influence that process the responsibility lies on the superpowers on the big powers which must agree on certain issues between themselves so that this fragile stability is not shaken more and for those in the room who don't know the region well what are the tensions that you're most worried could flare up you know we see those tensions close to our borders we see tensions in afghanistan we see unresolved you know situations there we are ourselves subject of occupation by armenia and this is a permanent source of threat our 20 percent almost of our territories are under armenian occupation in violation of international norms and united nation security council resolutions we see aggravation of tension with respect to us iranian relationship and the many other hotspots in the region which already are flaring our potential therefore uh we are very interested in safety security and predictability beyond our borders because even uh economic difficulties outside of azar bhajan can be uh influence our economic and social situation therefore uh i think stability in the region is the main concern which we have and instability in the region is a main nightmare if i may put it so thank you uh president governor i think uh i agree that the geopolitical tension is a quite uh which we we cannot influence but uh is better to avoid to the global superpowers the further dimensions so i think even the recent examples what happened at the beginning of this year in iran there is not let's say good news for the region so that's that's indirectly will affect not only for middle east but also for for the the rest of the world i think this is what we we we want to avoid as much as possible kazakhstan always plays significant role in all this peaceful negotiation including this the first uh agreement about nuclear deals which were the first negotiation between the countries uh happened in kazakhstan i think we will continue to play the role like a peaceful country which is try to bring countries together to the same table next year uh this year actually june the wto ministerial meetings will happen in the city of nir sultan which is again our kind of commitment to the multi-literalism i think the the key platform so back to the more optimistic issues is i think we also would like to announce that so actually after this session we have a signing ceremony with world economic forum in terms of the opening the affiliated center of the force industrial revolution centers of of the world economic forum why is important for us because i think is now the key challenge is we should not we should having these opportunities to leapfrog to be with the new technologies we should not avoid this kind of pessimistic paradigm to be left behind and i think that the new technologies give for the new emergent markets opportunities actually to implement the new technologies even faster than developed countries and back to the regional agenda i think again important that we are restoring the central asia we trying to connect central asia and kind of having the modern political slogan so let's make silk road great again great um tatiana velovaya velovaya well you know uh my greatest hope is well and i start with that i see at least three ladies in the room in red and i think we unconsciously are celebrating the coming chinese new year and this chinese new year it starts a new 12 year cycle and my greatest hope is that this is will be a different new cycle because the previous 12 years we permanently went from bad to worse and i hope that this is the new cycle when we will go from bad to better and better and better so i'm really hoping that we will be able to ease the geopolitical tensions that we will be able to go back on track of closer international cooperation on building peace prosperity for everybody and my biggest fear i'm afraid that we are losing the trust and the confidence in multilateral system because i think that's a crucial risk because not only on the level of national political elites but also on the level of population we are afraid of losing this support and we need multilateralism these days much better than we needed before that's why for example this year when we're celebrating 75th anniversary of the united nations we started a global conversation with everybody all around the world what we want like the future for us and what kind of the united nations we need for this future so i think that's a very important year for us really to realize how we can fine tune in a multilateral system but really what we have to do to preserve it thank you stanrey kostin i think the nightmare is the terrorism and radical islamic movements because according according information majority of those people fighting in syria came from this region including the russian caucus so of course these people do come back sometime and of course it just shows that there is a lot of ground for for the terrorism and radical islamic movements in this region and secondly don't forget about the neighboring countries like afghanistan in iran all this can substantially undermine the political stability in the region which would be really a nightmare on the positive side i very much hope that the region all the countries will be as prosperous and democratic as azir bhajan and kazakhstan and they will be neither that will be not the russian empire but with friendly countries we're developing good relationship with russia as well as with the rest of the world china america and other countries thank you very much so pulling it all together there's some the the groomy outlook for the for the next year is would stem from predominantly geopolitical tensions obviously the u.s. china reverberating in the region the the and its reverberations in afghanistan in iran as you've said in terrorist movements in other words the need for really careful multilateral global management of some of those tensions and as tatiana reminds us that multilateral systems looking very fragile so that's the that's the gloomy part of our panel's outlook for the next year the positive part of the outlook to for the governor is let's make the silk road great again it says even though the multilateral system might be crumbling within the eurasian area there are other institutions emerging the eurasian economic union china's initiatives in the region including the bri and the silk road initiatives and there's also a sense from this panel of renewal the president talked about giving young technocrats much more voice in the government giving young people across your country's a greater role in in shaping the future and i think the biggest takeaway of all is the extraordinary leap in connectivity across the region you know that's the that's the silk route in practice i think every one of you have talked about the thousands of miles of both road and rail connectivity that is starting to make this region really a a huge global hub so thank you for coming but thanks especially to the president of mongolia who kicked us off and to each of our panelists here today can you join in thanking them