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A Soviet-era plan to build the world's tallest dam edged closer to reality this month as international lenders step up support for Tajikistan's Roghun hydropower project.

In early October Dushanbe ratified a $300 million grant from the World Bank for the project and reports have since emerged of a possible further $500 million in funding from the Asian Development Bank.

Filippo Menga, an associate professor of geography at the University of Bergamo in Italy, told RFE/RL the recent funding news doesn't assure the project's completion, but with major multilateral banks tying their own credibility to Roghun, "financially and politically the project is now very hard to stop," he said.

The Roghun Dam project is set to rise 335 meters -- higher than the Eiffel Tower -- to plug a narrow gorge of the Vakhsh River 100 kilometers east of Dushanbe. The hydropower plant will double Tajikistan's generating capacity, potentially ending the country's chronic winter electricity shortages, and providing surplus power for export.

The massive dam will also displace more than 50,000 people as water rises to fill its reservoir, inundating several villages upstream of the project.

In a village near Roghun, Mukim Khasanov was one of the tens of thousands of people awaiting resettlement when RFE/RL's Tajik Service spoke to him in June. The 75-year-old farmer said his family were allocated a plot of land away from the dam but that inflation will devour much of the compensation for his house that was promised years earlier.

"When they assessed our housing and property, prices were completely different, including for building materials," he said. "Now everything is very expensive. For example, a wood panel cost 50 somoni (about $5.40) back then, and now it's 150 somoni (about $16.30)."

In Roghunyon, a suburb on the outskirts of Dushanbe named to reference the origin of many villagers already relocated from the reservoir's flood zone, some complain the land promised to them for growing crops never eventuated.

Others express "100 percent satisfaction" with the settlement. "No problems whatsoever," Tavakkal Shamsulloev said. "They've repaired our roads and installed electricity."

Opponents of the dam project have claimed some 32,000 people would be able to avoid resettlement if the dam were to be built just 35 meters lower.

Eugene Simonov, the coordinator of the conservation coalition Rivers Without Boundaries, told RFE/RL it appears likely Dushanbe has pursued the title of the tallest dam in the world as "an important quality of the national pride project akin to a sacred pyramid," for the country.

Dushanbe has said the record-breaking height will offer "superior economic and environmental performance" compared to lower versions of the dam. That assessment has been backed by World Bank reports.

The Roghun Dam was initially envisioned by the Soviet Union and work began in 1976. Amid the breakup of the USSR, followed by civil war in Tajikistan, the project collapsed. Efforts by newly independent Tajikistan to restart the project were initially opposed by Uzbekistan, which lies downstream of the dam.

Uzbekistan's then President Islam Karimov slammed the Roghun Dam as "stupid," citing safety concerns and fears Tajikistan could use its control of water flowing toward Uzbekistan for political leverage.

Uzbekistan's opposition to the dam evaporated following the death of Karimov in 2016. The following year, Uzbekistan's Foreign Minister Abdulaziz Komilov publicly invited Tajikistan to "go ahead and build" the dam, while insisting on guarantees regarding water use.

Construction resumed later that year, but the site proved immensely complex. A meters-wide vein of rock salt just upstream of the dam risked dissolving under pressure of a rising water reservoir, and the dam's location in a seismically restless region introduced the potential for "reservoir-triggered" quakes, according to multiple technical reports. Additionally, the Soviet-era work on the project was found to require extensive rebuilding to meet modern safety standards.

Webuild, the Italian infrastructure giant working on the project, declined to comment on technical aspects of the build, but a 2014 report describes "substantial remedial works" needed on Soviet construction efforts.

Roghun is being built as an embankment dam, incorporating a core of watertight clay buttressed on both sides by rockfill. The relatively flexible dam type was chosen in part for its capacity to absorb quakes better than crackable concrete-faced dams.

Two of the hydropower plant's turbines are already in operation, with the third of a total of six generating units scheduled to come online in 2027.

Menga, who has authored a book on water politics in Central Asia, says that with around 145 meters left to build up the dam and its completion requiring continued political goodwill from Tajikistan's Central Asian neighbors, "Roghun is more likely to be finished than ever before, but 'virtually assured' overstates it."

The Tajik government is estimated to still require around $5.8 billion to complete the Roghun hydropower project, which will be funded largely from the country's state budget. The target completion date is 2035.

A Ukrainian platform that shares captured Russian and North Korean military hardware for "destructive testing" and other research has granted access to 376 foreign companies and agencies since its launch, a spokesman for the initiative told RFE/RL on October 14.

Ukraine's Trophylab was announced in June as a "shared space for enemy weapons research" that publishes hands-on analysis of recovered weapons for approved Ukrainian and foreign entities. The level of international interest in the platform has the potential to significantly impact the Kremlin's weapons industry, analysts say.

Anna Harvey, a research fellow with the American Foreign Policy Council, told RFE/RL that, in addition to the platform's stated purpose of helping to develop countermeasures to individual Russian weapons, it is likely some companies using Trophylab will "reverse engineer Russian technology based off of Ukraine's captured samples." Such copycat products, she predicts, could become "direct competitors to Russian manufacturers selling abroad."

Harvey added that foreign entities that may have been exploring potential weapons purchases from Russia could now assess "how these systems actually perform on the battlefield," rather than relying on Russian specifications.

Trophylab holds samples of more than 200 captured items, including Russia's hypersonic Kinzhal missile, a T-90M tank, and North Korea's KN-23 ballistic missile. Those with access can apply to receive hardware for physical testing to the point of "complete destruction," if necessary. Completed research is uploaded to the portal by users, where it is checked for "compliance, uniqueness, and scientific value" before being published for all users of the platform to view.

Soon after its launch, applicants for access to Trophylab were split equally between Ukrainian and foreign entities, but by August the platform had received around 130 applications for access from Ukraine and more than 300 from abroad. Ukraine's Defense Ministry did not say at the time how many applicants were approved for access.

Trophylab's spokesman declined to specify the number of foreign countries currently accessing the research platform, but the organization says at the level of government agencies access is limited to those from a list of 28 countries that have signed security and other agreements with Ukraine.

Militaries have long shared what is known as "weapons technical intelligence" with allies at the state level, including both sides of of the ongoing conflict in Ukraine. Russia, for its part, has supplied North Korea with captured NATO military hardware used by Ukrainian forces and is reported to have sent advanced Western weapons to Tehran.

But insiders say the democratization represented by Trophylab, in which small startups can use the same research data as defense ministries, is likely to significantly accelerate weapons development in those countries with access to the intelligence.

In a July interview, Gus McLachlan, a retired Australian major general, said, "What TrophyLab does for the first time is makes [captured weapons research] widely available to innovation organisations, technology companies, and the broader defense industry in a way that we haven't seen before."