Since Russia’s war on Ukraine broke out on Feb. 24, Kazakhstan’s position toward the warring nations has shifted, as Central Asia’s most populous country takes stock of the potential impact of sanctions on its economy, and balances its longstanding links with Russia with an ambitious reform agenda developed in the aftermath of civil unrest in January.
Kazakhstan initially responded to the war with an ambiguous stance, but in April, it released a series of measures in an attempt to distance itself from Russia amid international pressure, as well as reports on the Bucha incident and other serious cases of Ukrainian civilian casualties.
According to the World Bank’s Europe and Central Asia Economic Update released on April 10, the war against Ukraine and sanctions on Russia have hit economies around the globe, with emerging market and developing countries in Europe and Central Asia expected to bear the brunt.
Central Asia’s economy is now forecast to shrink by 4.1% this year, compared with the pre-war forecast of 3% growth, as the economic shocks from the war compound the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic. This would be the second contraction in as many years, and twice as large as the pandemic-induced contraction in 2020.
Protests broke out on the streets in Kazakhstan on Jan. 2 this year due to a rise in the price of liquefied gas. On Jan. 4, the situation escalated into violent clashes between demonstrators and riot police and took a turn for the worse on Jan. 5 when President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev announced the dissolution of the former government and the dismissal of then-President Nursultan Nazarbayev. On the evening of Jan. 5, a large number of unidentified armed people stormed government buildings and airports in Almaty, Kazakhstan’s largest city. Since then, confrontation and military conflict broke out between armed groups and Kazakh security forces, resulting in the largest crisis in the country since its independence.
The first meeting of the High-Level Dialogue on Human Rights and Democratic Reform between Kazakhstan and the United States was held on April 11 in Nur-Sultan, Kazakhstan. Photo: Courtesy of Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Kazakhstan
Amid the crisis, Tokayev put in a rare appeal to mobilize peacekeeping forces from the Russian-led Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) to intervene in his domestic situation, the first time that a CSTO peacekeeping force has been used for peacekeeping in a member state.
On Jan. 8, the Security Council of Kazakhstan arrested Karim Massimov, the council’s former chairman and two-time president of Kazakhstan, on charges of treason. On Jan. 11, Tokayev again referred in his speech to “traitors” amongst security leaders, saying they had neglected their duties and left their posts when attacks took place.
After Jan. 12, the situation in Kazakhstan returned to calm. The CSTO peacekeeping force began withdrawing the next day. During the crisis, Colonel General Andrei Serdyukov, commander of the Russian Airborne Troops, was appointed commander of the CSTO Peacekeeping Forces in the Republic of Kazakhstan. Russia had deployed its 45th Guards Spetsnaz Brigade, the 98th Airborne Division and the 31st Guards Air Assault Brigade to the operation.
Tokayev also thanked Russian President Vladimir Putin and other leaders of the CSTO countries in particular, and mentioned Putin’s “comradely” and “warm” response to his appeal for troops.
In a national address on March 16, as the war in Ukraine raged on, Tokayev referred, without naming Russia, to “a devastating geopolitical storm has broken out on the planet.” He said that Kazakhstan must firmly adhere to a strategic course aimed at “protecting the sovereignty and territorial integrity” of the country. He then emphasized that “now it is not the time to erect political barricades” or “organize rallies on every occasion.”
Kazakhstan has since repeatedly said its government will not recognize the two pro-Russian authorities, the “Donetsk People’s Republic” and the “Luhansk People’s Republic”, in eastern Ukraine. And the country also said it won’t be used as a tool to circumvent U.S. and European Union (EU) sanctions on Russia, nor will it join the sanctions.
In a rare article for U.S.-based The National Interest on April 4, Tokayev said turbulence in Eurasia “will not slow Kazakhstan’s progress.”
On April 11, Uzra Zeya, the U.S. undersecretary of state for civilian security, democracy, and human rights met with the Kazakh president’s special representative for international cooperation, Erzhan Kazykhanov, while on a visit to the capital Nur-Sultan. In a statement released after their dialogue, Kazakhstan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that U.S. sanctions on Russia were “specifically designed to minimize negative impacts on allies and partners, including Kazakhstan.”
In recent months, Tokayev has declared a political reform agenda that includes voluntarily reducing presidential power, strengthening parliamentary functions, further decentralizing local government, developing multiparty competition in Kazakhstan and combatting the elites’ monopoly over resources. Whether Kazakhstan will distance itself from Russia on Ukraine to win more substantive support for Tokayev’s “New Kazakhstan” from the West remains to be seen.
Since the outbreak of war on Feb. 24, public opinion in Kazakhstan, which has maintained longstanding friendly relations with both Russia and Ukraine, has shown signs of polarization. At the beginning of the conflict, the Kazakh government adopted a rare neutral stance on the topic. The Kazakh government, usually highly wary of mass civil campaigns, did not intervene in a legal rally held in Almaty on Feb. 26 following the war’s abrupt outbreak. The rally, originally to protest chronic urban air pollution, saw many attendees waving Ukrainian flags, express sympathy for Ukraine and condemn Russia’s actions. Police did not intervene.
POn March 6, the Almaty city government approved a downtown pro-Ukraine rally that drew thousands of protesters.
But later applications for anti-war rallies submitted across Kazakhstan have not been approved. Media outlets speculate that the Kazakh government is concerned that they may sow further division in domestic opinion and foment social unrest.
There is a sizeable Russian-speaking population in Kazakhstan. Signs of a split between pro-Russian and pro-Ukrainian Kazakhstanis have emerged since war broke out.
Local media has found that fundraisers for Ukraine have not been interfered with or restricted by the government. Most have sought to raise money for humanitarian supplies, with some involving the Ukrainian Embassy in Kazakhstan.
The Kazakh government’s moves to end ambiguity on the Russian-Ukrainian issue began on April 1, when Kazakhstan’s first deputy chief of staff of the president, Timur Sulemenov, said in an interview on his visit to the EU that Kazakhstan respects the territorial integrity of Ukraine and “will only respect decisions taken at the level of the United Nations” on Crimea and Donbas.
“Of course, Russia wanted us to be more on their side. But Kazakhstan respects the territorial integrity of Ukraine. We did not recognize and will not recognize the Crimean situation or the Donbas situation because the UN does not recognize them. We will only respect decisions taken at the level of the United Nations,” Selomenov said.
Selomenov added that “the last thing we want is secondary sanctions of the US and the EU to be applied to Kazakhstan.”
On the same day, President Tokayev had his third telephone conversation with Russian President Vladimir Putin since the outbreak of the war. According to an official statement from Kazakhstan, the two “thoroughly discussed the current state and prospects for the development of trade and economic cooperation between the two states” and have “agreed to intensify cooperation between the two governments on the most important commodities in order to maintain the dynamics of bilateral trade.”
The statement also said that the two presidents discussed the progress of Russian-Ukrainian negotiations, and that “a common understanding was expressed of the exceptional importance of reaching agreements on the neutral, non-aligned, nuclear-free status of Ukraine.”
In his article published on April 4, Tokayev told the English language readership of National Interest magazine that Kazakhstan was clear that what was happening in Ukraine was a “war,” and acknowledged it as “a tragedy the scale of which the European continent has not experienced since long ago.” Tokayev wrote that “Kazakhstan and Russia enjoy special relations of mutual cooperation. Meanwhile, we also have deep traditions of friendly relations with Ukraine. We respect its territorial integrity—as does the overwhelming majority of the world.”
He also wrote that Kazakhstan hoped “for a swift and just resolution of the conflict in accordance with UN Charter,” and that Kazakhstan was “both willing and able to continue its role as international mediator.”
However, the substance of the commentary was in the “New Kazakhstan” plan proposed in his March 16 state of the union address, including “thorough reforms” for the Office of the President, Parliament, local administrations, as well as the judiciary, and the law enforcement system. Tokayev posited that political powers would be “rebalanced,” shifting Kazakhstan from a “super-presidential” to a “normative presidential” model of government.
In reiterating that the system “must work for all people, not just for the very few, as has often been the case in the past,” Tokayev pointed to inadequacies in the tenure of his predecessor Nursultan Nazarbayev, the first president of Kazakhstan.
Since the end of civil unrest in Kazahkstan in January, Tokayev claimed to have cracked a conspiracy in the security forces aimed at removing the country’s leadership, and has taken over as the head of Kazakhstan’s Security Council. Most of Nazarbayev’s family members have resigned from the political and economic positions they held before the protests.
After the unrest, Tokayev hinted that various political ailments, including corruption and administrative inefficiency, arose in Kazakhstan during Nazarbayev’s reign. But he has not publicly denied Nazarbayev’s landmark legacy of leading Kazakhstan to independence, promoting a balanced diplomacy, and denuclearizing the country after the collapse of the Soviet Union, and Kazakh state media has continued to report on public events attended by Nazarbayev.
Russian CSTO peacekeepers march through the Chkalovsky airfield as they arrive from Almaty on Jan. 15. Photo: VCG
Foreign Minister Mukhtar Tleuberdi recapitulated Kazakhstan’s official position on the Russia-Ukraine conflict in media interviews.
In an exclusive interview for Kazakh state media Habar24 on April 7, Tleuberdi said that Kazakhstan will continue to make every effort to achieve a sustainable peace. The foreign minister said that Kazakhstan believes that negotiation was the key to ending hostilities, determining the status of the Donbas region, and seeking to lift existing sanctions against Russia in the future.
He said that Kazakhstan and Russia “have historically had close political, economic, cultural, and humanitarian ties” as the two countries “share the world’s longest continuous international border.” “We intend to maintain the existing level of trade and economic interaction with Russian partners. Overall, Russia and Kazakhstan are allies and strategic partners in legal and political cooperation. We also intend to quickly restore high-level mechanisms for extensive and mutually-beneficial cooperation with Ukraine once the conflict ends.
He also expressed concerns about the prospect of Western sanctions against Russia, and said that Kazakhstan is negotiating with “Western partners” on related issues, and insisted that “Kazakhstan does not intend to join the sanctions pressure on the Russian Federation ... and makes every effort to prevent the serious impact of these sanctions on the development of our own economy.”
Tleuberdi said that “To prevent secondary sanctions and minimize the negative impact on our citizens, commodity producers and exporters, Kazakhstan does not intend to take any targeted steps to circumvent sanctions.” He added that as a full member of the Eurasian Economic Union and the World Trade Organization, “Kazakhstan will continue to develop trade relations with the Russian Federation and other countries.”
In the U.N. General Assembly’s vote on whether to suspend Russia’s from the U.N. Human Rights Council on April 7, Kazakhstan joined 24 countries, including China and Russia, in voting against the draft resolution, though this did not prevent the resolution from being passed with 93 votes. A total of 58 members including Brazil, India, Iraq and South Africa abstained, and 18 countries including Armenia did not take part in voting.
Kazakh Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Akan Rakhmetulin said that the current sanctions issue faced by Kazakhstan is “complex and serious.”
“We, who have deep integration with Russia, as well as the longest land border, cannot not feel the impact of these sanctions,” Rakhmetulin said.
He revealed that the Kazakh government is currently conducting active talks with U.S. officials at all levels to mitigate the impact of sanctions, covering the two governments, embassies, chambers of commerce and businesses.
He went on to say that the U.S. understands that Kazakhstan shares a highly-interdependent market and mutually reliant economy with Russia. He said that the U.S. is making efforts to reduce pressure and minimize the impact of the sanctions on Kazakhstan’s economy and will continue to do so in the future.