Astana, 4 November, . VRK News has launched its Profiles series with an interactive longread about Kazakhstan’s new deputy prime minister and transport minister Assel Zhanassova: sixteen chapters, a career timeline, a panel of Kazpost figures, a diagram of the Address’s transport tasks and eleven video interviews from 2019–2025, in Russian, Kazakh and English.
The longread tells a story that fits into a few lines of an official profile. A pupil at an Almaty physics and maths school was told, in her words, by the head of the mathematics Olympiad reserve that girls had no place there; she switched to physics and became a prizewinner at an international Olympiad. In London she lived, as she recalls, on a hundred dollars a month, graduated from Cambridge with distinction, and built the cybersecurity system of the mining group ENRC starting with password rules that were posted even in the toilets. At Kazpost, which was about to be sold, she asked for a year to save it; a year later the company made its first net profit in five years.
The interactive parts invite exploration: each of the fourteen points on the timeline opens a detail with its source, the Kazpost panel shows the annual result, “before — after” figures and postal workers’ pay, and the Address diagram shows the Bakhty–Ayagoz line, the Aral–Caspian highway and the border checkpoints the new minister must deliver in 2027. A separate chapter, “What has been checked”, honestly sorts the claims into three piles: confirmed, known only from her own words, and not confirmed. Videos load only when tapped.
What it means: This is the first detailed portrait of the new head of transport built not from an official profile but from documents, her interviews over the years and figures that can be checked through the links.
Who benefits: Readers who want to understand who is now responsible for roads, railways and transit and what experience she brings to the job; the “Рус · Қаз · Eng” switch at the top opens the longread in the right language.
Background: The Akorda published the decree appointing Zhanassova deputy prime minister and minister of transport on 3 November; the President’s Address of 28 October set the sector deadlines for 2027.
We have also reported on Zhanassova’s appointment.
