During the state visit to Moscow in the end of October, Tajikistan’s President Emomali Rakhmon was planning to solve some tense issues in the relationship between Dushanbe and Moscow and turn these to Tajikistan’s advantage. The major issues Rahmon aimed to address include the agreements on the continued deployment of the Russian military base in Tajikistan and the fulfillment of a promise to invest US$2 billion in the construction of the Rogun hydroelectric power station, which the Russian Government made several years ago. None of the issues addressed by the Tajik President attained expected results, however experts claim that as a result of the visit, the relationship between Tajikistan and Russia will normalize temporarily. Still, President Rakhmon essentially returned back to Dushanbe empty-handed.

The primary issue on the agenda for the Tajik delegation was to discuss the “equal rights military cooperation”. As was reported earlier, Dushanbe demands that Moscow changes the format of military cooperation between the two countries and starts paying for its military base in Tajikistan. Surprisingly, in the joint statement neither side mentioned the issue. The 201^st Russian military base was mentioned only once, when both sides noted “the contribution of the Russian military base to the process of guaranteeing security in the Central Asia region”. 

Thus, experts claim that Dushanbe failed to reach its objective, as both sides conceded that the base would continually remain on Tajik territory for free. Tajikistan’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Khamrokhon Zarifi stated that “according to the agreement between the two countries signed in 2004, the Russian military base will stay in Tajikistan on this basis until 2014”. Russian Minister of Defense Anatolii Serdyukov confirms that a new agreement on the military base can be signed only after the current agreement will terminate, and only then will the sides decide if the base will stay under the previous conditions or whether Russia will have to pay for it.

Another urgent issue for Tajikistan is the construction of the Rogun hydropower station project, which became a “national idea” for the Government of Tajikistan. Experts expected that the Tajik President would address the issue of the ‘Russian promise’ to invest US$ 2 billion in the development of hydropower industry in Tajikistan at point blank. Vladimir Putin stated the promise in 2004 in exchange for Rakhmon’s consent to provide the 201^st division with the status of Russian military base and to transfer “Window”, a station for tracking extraterrestrial objects, to Russian possession.

However, the issue of joint construction of the Rogun hydropower station was not even discussed during the negotiations. Instead, “mutual interests in the realization of hydropower projects in Tajikistan were reaffirmed”. As the Russian Ministry of Energy stated after the meeting with the Tajik President, Russia has never refused to participate in the construction, but “for the time being, a concrete formula for Russia to participate in the construction of this object is absent”. Meanwhile, Khamrokhon Zarifi informed journalists that “an international consortium for the construction of the Rogun station will be created very soon, where any country can take part…”.

In general, very little came out of the three-day state visit of President Rakhmon to Russia, although he left Moscow in high spirit. The state visit was organized with the highest level of state ceremony, and the Tajik President was awarded the title of honorary professor of the most prestigious Russian University – Moscow State University. In addition, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev promised his Tajik counterpart to adopt new migration rules, which will improve the status of the Tajik labor migrants in the Russian Federation. However, this promise of Medvedev still seems more like a political declaration, since it is practically impossible to implement a ‘selective’ approach specifically to labor migrants from Tajikistan, as opposed to the large numbers arriving from other countries. 

Intrinsically, the content of the visit seems quite poor. Suffice it to say that neither side managed to prepare any document to sign as a result of the negotiations. The joint communiqué did not even provide space for the questions. Such practice is usual in cases where both parties want to avoid discussion of critical issues. In this case specifically, these critical issues seem to have been taken out of the joint statement completely. Therefore, all the issues contributing to tension in the relationship between the two countries remain open. Some experts predict the beginning of a “cold period” between Tajikistan and Russia, and consequently a decreasing influence of Russia in Central Asia, which could in turn imply new opportunities for the United States.