Translation of the excerpt from the post by Scaliger, an author of the Russian-language neweurasia.

For the last few years Kazakhstan has been very anxious about its international image. Earlier this year, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs created a special division of international PR. Image-building is a not cheap thing (politically anxious citizens have not forgotten millions of dollars spent on articles in the U.S. newspapers during the Nazarbayev’s visit to the States), and the PR department’s budget is some 10 million dollars of the budget monies.

Obviously, these “expensive” officials do not watch TV at all. Otherwise, they could see that the most effective way of a country PR is sport. This was proven lately by the bicycle team Astana. Created by efforts of only one person, well-known biker Alexander Vinokurov, who reached up to ex-premier Ahmetov, Astana has won a major Vuelta race last fall.

This kind of sport is popular enough in the Europe. Broadcasts show how many people in Italy, France, Spain come to cheer the sportsmen during the whole route. Currently, the first part of a Giro’d'Italia race is taking place. And Astana shows very decent results there.

Thanks to our racers, the audience has an opportunity to constantly see the flag of Kazakhstan. What is it if not a promotion of an international image? And coming back to the money issue - the possibility of creation of the CIS team was discussed on the Internet bicycle forums several years ago. It was suggested that the budget required would amount to $3-5 million each year.

Let’s compare the spendings of the Kazakh Foreign Ministry on PR and positive outcomes of the victories of our racers. I believe, it would be much better to invest this money in construction of sports complexes in the regions and popularization of this kind of sports within the country.