THE REPUBLIC OF CENTRAL ASIA

and surrounding areas

Sergei Varinnikov starts off with Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrghizistan, Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan in 1994

Russia still has ownership of the Baikonur Cosmodrome (not that it matters much after the turn of the millenium...)

These happen before 'Tethys Rising'

• The War of Dzungarian Liberation with China (1996). The northern half of Xinjiang annexed by Central Asia, which secures the headwaters of the Irtysh and Yenisei river systems
• Secession of southern Siberian oblasts and request for annexation (1998)
• Mongolia's request for annexation (1999)

These happen after 'Tethys Rising'

• Astrakhan declares itself a free city in 2000
• the Volga-Don Canal IOTL gets wrecked by the rising sea levels of the Caspian and becomes the Volga-Don Seaway.
• Formation of Taqiristan from the lands south of the new Tethys Sea and north of Iran. This is Sergei's Australia, where he dumps criminals.
• Central Asia provides basing rights for the United States in the aftermath of 9/11, just like the 'stans did IOTL.
• Central Asia also takes over the liquidation of the Taliban during the Iraq War of 2003 so the United States and NATO don't have to worry about it anymore. They also allow the planned northern attack to go in at full strength when Turkey refuses to allow it (unlike OTL). The TASK FORCE Iraq War ends much quicker.
• Afghanistan dismembered; northwestern lands forcibly annexed to Taqiristan, northern lands across the mountains from Kabul annexed by Central Asia, everything else annexed by Pakistan.

Population of Central Asia around 75,000,000 by the turn of the millenium

Foreign Policy in the early 21st Century:

• Chechnya is destroyed post-9/11 by both Russia and Central Asia acting in concert.
• Azerbaijania becomes a client state as the Caspian/Tethys Sea rises (before 2005)
• The lands between the Volga-Don Seaway and the Caucasus Mountains become the nation of Dagestan in 2005, to guarantee the international designation of the Seaway and guarantee Central Asia's access to the Black Sea as the Caspian/Aral/Tethys Sea rises. They are a client state of Central Asia.
• The Free City of Astrakhan requests annexation by Central Asia in 2006. Most of Astrakhan resides under transparent destreum domes in the shallows of the Tethys Sea by this time.
• The Real-Life issue with South Ossetia in 2008 becomes an issue with Dagestan's independence in the TASK FORCE universe, with all the leftover Chechen terrorist groups and the occasional Russian sepratist group.
• HEAVILY supports the Peshmerga of Kurdistan in Turkey, Iraq, and Iran after the Iraq War of 2003. Kurdistan forms from pieces of all 3 nations in 2010 after the United States pulls out of Iraq, and becomes a client state of Central Asia. Needless to say, the partial dismemberment of Turkey puts Sergei at odds with NATO.
• the partial dismemberment of Turkey also results in Armenia becoming a Central Asian client state.
• Georgia (the western Caucasian nation, not the American state) is being actively courted by both Russia and Central Asia to be in their specific sphere of influence.
• Central Asia provided the intel on Osama bin Laden's location in Pakistan before the 2011 raid
• Central Asia helped Russia with the infrastructure projects involved with the Sochi Winter Olympics of 2014.
• Eastern Iraq is split between much smaller Sunni and Shiite states in the Tigris/Euphrates basin in 2010.
• Western Iraq (along with most of Syria and northernmost Saudi Arabia) become the ISIS Caliphate around 2014. This is what VIPER takes over in 2016.

Iran's nuclear weapons production facilities destroyed by orbital strikes July 2015. The United States rams a sanctioning scheme through the United Nations afterwards.

Baluchistan (southeastern Iran and southwestern Pakistan) becomes an independent nation thanks to the resulting instability in Iran and continuing problems in Pakistan late 2015.

Sometime between "World War VIPER" and "Ozymandias" there is an event called the South Asian War, in which Central Asia apparently conducted unspecified atrocities against Muslims.