Playing both sides: Central Asia between Russia and the West

Central Asia is adept at hedging between Moscow and the West. Much of its success lies in adhering to a single maxim: tell each side what it wants to hear.

Expert comment Published 26 March 2025 Updated 16 April 2025 4 minute READ

The leaderships of the Central Asian states have been refining a multi-vectoring foreign policy stance since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 – painting one picture to Russian counterparts and another to officials from Europe and the United States.

In dealings with Moscow, Central Asian leaders invariably emphasize the threat they face from Western secondary sanctions. In their discussions with Western leaders, they push for exemptions from those sanctions, particularly in the energy sphere – pointing to the pressure exerted on them by Moscow to align with Russia’s policies.

This approach has proven effective so far, allowing Central Asian countries to retain their sovereignty, avoid secondary sanctions and attract a wide array of international economic partners.

Growing links with Moscow 

Following Ukraine’s successful counteroffensive in September 2022, the prevailing wisdom was that Central Asia was using Moscow’s vulnerability to gradually distance itself from Russia.

But facts and figures paint a different, more layered picture. Central Asia’s trade with Russia has been booming. The number of Russian firms in Central Asia has grown. Many of these businesses are taking advantage of membership in the Eurasian Economic Union, but others are directly under the influence of Moscow and helping to support the Russian economy.

Moscow has been making particularly significant inroads into the energy sectors of Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan as it attempts to find new markets for its exports as a consequence of sanctions. 

Central Asia is crucial to this geographical re-routing of Moscow’s trade, and the number of trade corridors traversing the region has been expanding accordingly.

In 2023 Russia reversed the direction of a Soviet-era pipeline to export its gas to Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, both of which are plagued by shortages. A new pipeline via Kazakhstan is fast emerging as the most feasible proposal currently under consideration to ship Russian gas to China, overtaking the much discussed – but yet-to-be signed off – Power of Siberia 2 project.

If successfully commissioned, the pipeline could replace up to one-third of the gas export volumes Moscow has lost following the suspension of supplies to Europe. Russia also recently extended its agreement to piggyback off Kazakhstan’s oil pipeline to China to ship its own volumes.

In Uzbekistan, Russia’s Lukoil and Gazprom are the chief foreign operators working in Uzbekistan’s main fields. And it is widely reported that Russia controls much of the sector through offshore companies.

Kazakhstan is the largest exporter and producer of mined uranium in the world, with 43 per cent of global supply in 2022. Moscow controls 25 per cent of Astana’s uranium production. And Russia’s Rosatom is one of four potential suppliers of nuclear technology for Kazakhstan’s planned nuclear power plant. As Astana’s traditional go-to nuclear partner, Rosatom is expected to play a key role in the project.

Russian fear of colonial drift

Despite such ties, Russia’s leadership still worries that Central Asia is moving too far out of Moscow’s orbit. A leaked report of a strategy session led by Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin in April 2024, published by the Financial Times in February of this year, reveals Moscow’s concerns with a rare forthrightness.

Central Asian leaderships prioritize cultivating diverse relationships over membership in trade blocs designed by Moscow.

The presentation lays the blame directly at the feet of the West for luring Central Asia out of Moscow’s dominion with a carrot-and-stick approach. And the report argues that Russia’s ambition should be to create its own sphere of influence in Eurasia to rival China, the US and the EU, tying the Central Asian region more firmly to Moscow and forming a stronger bridge to the Global South.

This proposal appears utopian. Even the much more modest, Russia-dominated Eurasian Economic Union has been unable to attract new members and expand its influence.

And in 2024 Kazakhstan refused to apply for full membership in BRICS, much to Russia’s chagrin. It later agreed, together with Uzbekistan, to accept partner status, but Central Asian leaderships prioritize cultivating diverse relationships over membership in trade blocs designed by Moscow.

The Europeans are coming

The first-ever EU-Central Asia leaders’ summit, scheduled for 3-4 April in Samarkand, will formalize the region’s cooperation with Europe at the highest political level. As such, it is precisely the type of development to fuel Russian fears that the Central Asian states are emerging as regional political actors in their own right.

The EU is Central Asia’s biggest foreign investor, and a key trade partner.

Since 2023, Western leaders have been flocking to Central Asia on high-level state visits, keen to take advantage of potential cooperation with a region containing some of the world’s largest hydrocarbon reserves and critical raw materials. The EU is Central Asia’s biggest foreign investor, and a key trade partner together with China and Russia.

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Renewable energy and the development of supply chain hubs will feature prominently on the agenda. So too will the development of the Trans-Caspian International Transport Route (also known as the Middle Corridor), a multimodal land and sea route crossing Central Asia, the Caspian Sea, the South Caucasus and Turkey, before reaching the EU.

In January 2024, the European Commission announced a €10 billion investment to boost transport connectivity in Central Asia. Although the amount of cargo traveling along the Middle Corridor has greatly expanded since 2022, its many limitations mean that it does not yet offer a serious alternative to the traditional Northern Route crossing Russia.

Moving away from a colonial past

The ability of the Central Asian states to manoeuvre between East and West with increased confidence and agency limits the prospects for a Ukrainian scenario coming to pass in the region. 

China’s role as Central Asia’s undisputed economic overlord also makes it unlikely that any regional state will become a vassal of Moscow in the mould of Belarus. Beijing views Russia’s concern about Central Asia’s colonial drift with a disinterested nonchalance, secure in the knowledge that time is on its side in the post-imperial drive for influence.

Moscow…needs Central Asia now more than ever as a conduit for sanctions evasion, to re-orient its trade and to demonstrate that it still has allies.

Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine has accelerated the regional decolonization process that was already well underway in Central Asia before 2022, fuelled by new histories of the Soviet period, declassified documents and overhauled educational systems. 

Despite Russian efforts to reverse this trend, the process is set to only become more pronounced when the Soviet-era elites currently at the helm give way to a younger demographic with limited knowledge of the Russian language and no historical memory of the USSR.

That is a problem for Moscow, which needs Central Asia now more than ever as a conduit for sanctions evasion, to re-orient its trade and to demonstrate that it still has allies. Russia will therefore double down on the ties that still bind Central Asia to its former colonial metropolis, such as pipelines, railways and elite relationships.

The Central Asian states, in turn, will seek to continue cooperation with Russia when it furthers their own interests, even as they pursue stronger relationships with Western partners. 

As Moscow continues its periodic threats to bring the Central Asian states to heel, the region’s leaderships will need to refine and employ the most sophisticated tools they have in their respective arsenals to continue this balancing act.