Otabek Akromov is a PhD researcher in Political Science at the University of Minnesota and a policy analyst at the Center for Progressive Reforms in Tashkent, Uzbekistan. His research interests lie at the intersection of Comparative Politics and International Relations. Specifically, he is scholarly interested in state- and nation-building, authoritarian politics, and the foreign policy of small states in the post-Soviet region. He is the author of Putin’s Russia in the Making of a New International Order: An English School Perspective.