Eight years ago, Kazakh Shrugged off Russian President Vladimir Putin’s
remarks suggesting he could pull a Ukraine on Kazakhstan. They did so again in
January when Putin reiterated his denial of Kazakh nation and statehood while
Russian troops massed on Ukraine’s border. Today, Kazakhs no longer discount
Putin’s words.
اضافة اعلان
As a result, the days are likely gone when
Kazakhstan would invite Russian troops to squash a popular revolt and rioting
fueled by infighting among the country’s elite. But, to be fair, Russian troops
withdrew within days early this year after helping to restore law and order,
despite Putin’s rhetoric.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on February 24 puts
Putin’s assertion that “Kazakhstan is a Russian-speaking country in the full
sense of the word” in a different light, even if few, if any, believe that the
Russian leader is about to take action.
Nevertheless, today, Kazakhs pay attention to
accusations by Russian commentators and officials that Kazakhstan has become an
enemy by failing to support Putin’s war in Ukraine.
Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev made his
opposition to the invasion clear when he attended in June the St. Petersburg
Economic Forum. Sitting next to Putin, Tokayev insisted that Kazakhstan did not
recognize breakaway Russian-supported “quasi-state formations” such as
Ukraine’s regions of Donetsk and Luhansk and Georgia’s Abkhazia and South
Ossetia.
Tokayev further appeared to confirm Russian
assessments of Kazakh hostility when he declared that Kazakhstan hoped to offer
an alternative to Western businesses leaving Russia because of US and European
sanctions imposed in response to the invasion.
Earlier, Kazakhstan abstained to vote in the United
Nations General Assembly to condemn Russia for its invasion of Ukraine.
Since then, Kazakhstan’s sovereign wealth fund
announced that it would no longer do business in Russian rubles. Kazakhstan
also stopped producing Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine against COVID-19.
More hard-hitting, Kazakhstan reversed its
long-standing monetary policy, allowing the Kazakh tenge to track the ruble. In
doing so, it effectively decoupled its currency from its Russian counterpart.
Russia saw the move as a step toward a Kazakh
withdrawal from the monetary committee of the Commonwealth of Independent
States (CIS), the regional organization of former Soviet republics established
after the demise of the Soviet Union.
The lessons of the January revolt and the Russian
invasion have also prompted Kazakhstan to focus on strengthening its armed
forces, building a local defense industry, and reducing its reliance on Russia
for arms purchases.
Tokayev hopes that the EU will help Kazakhstan develop "alternative transcontinental corridors", including "an international trans-Caspian traffic route” that would bypass Russia and link it to a pipeline that connects the Azerbaijan capital of Baku to the Turkish Mediterranean port of Ceyhan.
Kazakhstan, the only Central Asian country to border
Russia, is vulnerable because its 7,644-kilometer border with Russia is the
world’s longest continuous international frontier and the second-longest by
total length, after the Canada-US border.
In retaliation for Kazakh support of efforts to
reduce EU dependence on Russian energy, Russia this month halted the flow of
oil through a pipeline that pumps oil from Kazakhstan’s Tengiz oil field to the
Russian Black Sea port of Novorossiysk.
The closure, ordered by a Russian court initially
for one month, followed on the heels of a telephone call between Tokayev and EU
Council President Charles Michel.
Tokayev hopes that the EU will help Kazakhstan
develop “alternative transcontinental corridors”, including “an international
trans-Caspian traffic route” that would bypass Russia and link it to a pipeline
that connects the Azerbaijan capital of Baku to the Turkish Mediterranean port
of Ceyhan.
Focused on connectivity, the Kazakh, Azerbaijani,
and Turkish ministers of foreign affairs and transport met in late June to
discuss the accelerated development of the route or Middle Corridor that would
link Europe and China, bypassing Russia.
The EU-Kazakh discussion reflects heightened
European interest in Central Asia. In an earlier indication, EU officials said
that the EU would become the top investor in the world’s tallest dam in
Tajikistan. The move was aimed at helping Central Asia reduce its reliance on
Russia and constituted part of the EU’s answer to China’s Belt and Road
Initiative.
It is an approach that is gaining traction in
Washington.
“As Washington policymakers look for ways to counter
Russian influence and complicate Putin’s life, helping Kazakhstan reduce its
dependence on Moscow-controlled pipelines, reform its economy, and coordinate
with neighboring Central Asian states to limit the influence of both China and
Russia might be a good place to start,” said Wall Street Journal columnist
Walter Russell Mead.
Even so, the increasingly tense Russian-Kazakh
relationship has not prevented Kazakhstan from planning to participate,
alongside, among others, China, Iran, India,
Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan, and Armenia, in
Russia’s International Army Games next month, the first time the event
is being held since Russia invaded Ukraine.
The games are likely to be a mere blip on a downward
trend.
Putin signalled that he had not lost sight of
Central Asia because of Ukraine by last month visiting Takijistan, home to Russia’s
largest foreign base, and Turkmenistan for a Caspian summit that Tokayev also
attended. It was Putin’s first trip abroad since his troops invaded Ukraine.
“The war of words is likely to escalate in the
coming days and weeks. Moscow is certainly likely to use its control of
pipelines, its propaganda apparatus, and its ties with China to try to rein in
Kazakhstan. Nur-Sultan, in response, will likely pursue a more nationalistic
policy at home and seek closer relations with the West,” said Russia and Central
Asia analyst Paul Goble, referring to the Kazakh capital that was renamed
Nur-Sultan in 2019.
James M. Dorsey is an award-winning journalist and scholar, a senior fellow at the
National University of Singapore’s Middle East Institute and adjunct senior fellow
at Nanyang Technological University’s S. Rajaratnam School of International
Studies, and the author of the syndicated column and blog, The Turbulent World
of Middle East Soccer.
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