Kant, Kyrgyzstan

Kant Кант
The main street of Kant
Kant Location in Kyrgyzstan
Coordinates: 42°53′N 74°51′E / 42.883°N 74.850°E / 42.883; 74.850
Country	Kyrgyzstan
Province	Chuy Region
District	Ysyk-Ata District
Established	1928
Elevation	743 m (2,437 ft)
Population (2009)
• Total	21,589
Time zone	UTC+6

Kant is a town in the Chuy Valley of northern Kyrgyzstan, some 20 kilometres (12 mi) east of Bishkek. It is the administrative center of the Ysyk-Ata District (formerly Kant District). Kant was established in 1928.

The Kyrgyz word for sugar is "kant", and the city received its name when a sugar plant was built there in the 1930s. (It is an often repeated myth that the town was named after the German philosopher Immanuel Kant).

Kant is an industrial and service center. Among notable local enterprises is the Abdysh Ata Brewery, whose products are well known throughout Kyrgyzstan. During the Soviet era, Kant and its surrounding area were home to a large number of ethnic Germans who had been forcibly relocated to Central Asia in 1941 from the Volga region when the Volga German Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic was abolished. Most left for Germany during the 1990s and after the demise of the Soviet Union when the factories where they had worked shut down. Several other nearby settlements, such as Luxemburg and Bergtal, still carry their German names, but retain only very small remnants of their Volga German and Russian Mennonite founders.

The Kant Air Base near the city is now host to the Russian Air Force's 5th Air Army's 999th Air Base positioned in Kyrgyzstan in response to the United States presence at Manas Air Base. The Kant airbase is also a structural subdivision of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO).

In February 2012, Kyrgyz President Almazbek Atambayev called for the Kant base to be closed, saying neither Russia nor Kyrgyzstan needs it. In May, Col. Gen. Alexander Zelin of Russian Army declared his country had no plan to withdraw from the town of Kant, adding that the base’s organizational and personnel structure will remain as is. Later in August, Russia obtained a prolongation period from Kyrgyzstan, allowing Russian military sites to remain for 15 more years after the expiration of the current contract in 2017.