Shifting geopolitical orientations in Central Asia

There are some striking similarities between the five Central Asian states. To name but a few, since their independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, their governance systems have been characterized by a centralization of power, strong presidential authority, state heavy interventions in economy, and close ties between political authority and economic wealth. What also united them was the nature of their entanglement with Russia, which goes far beyond shared Soviet institutional legacies visible in what we could call elite mentalities and contemporary administrative structures.

For the last 35 years, for Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, Russia has been a natural reference point in their domestic and foreign policies. This attitude did not result only from Russia’s simple determination to have a say about their domestic and foreign policies. Rather, it was a two-directional process. Since the Soviet collapse in 1991, the five states continued to see Russia as the Soviet successor state, attributing to this emerging hegemon the right to claim ownership of the shared socialist past and to influence their development paths. Their entanglements with Russia were thus characterized by a belief in Russia’s superiority over Central Asia and Central Asia’s compliance. This largely submissive attitude differentiated Central Asian states from other post-Soviet and post-socialist countries in Eastern Europe and the South Caucasus, where both the official and public attitudes towards Russia have been more ambiguous and often changed over time, oscillating between some sympathy, tolerance and animosity.

Geopolitical reality

This long-term pro-Russian orientation of Central Asia might appear surprising from a mainstream geopolitical perspective, which is again gaining prominence today, and which sees geographical determinism as a crucial factor shaping geopolitical realities. Indeed, Central Asian countries differ significantly in their natural resource wealth, which translates into differences in their political weight internationally. Although not deprived of natural resources, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan are landlocked, highly mountainous, and trapped in transport and energy bottlenecks. In contrast, oil exports constituted the main driver of growth in Kazakhstan, whereas gas exports played the same role in Turkmenistan. Uzbekistan for a long time followed a so-called “Uzbek model” characterized by a state-regulated market economy and limited space for foreign trade. And yet, despite the different economic and foreign policy tangents of the five countries, and the occasional intra-regional leadership rivalries between them, a pro-Russia orientation seemed natural to their political elites.

This attitude did not automatically change with Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. From the region’s perspective, it initially seemed to be a far-away conflict. And yet, the Russo-Ukrainian War eventually proved to be a critical juncture in Central Asia’s relations with Russia.

The full-scale invasion of Ukraine resulted in Russia’s immediate isolation by much of the western world. From the western perspective, this conflict constituted a major international and not only European event, and the expectation was that the rest of the world would need to take sides: either with Russia or against it. Russia’s conviction was that its traditional allies would automatically offer support. In this light, it might appear surprising that no Central Asian government has officially reacted to this war either by supporting or condemning Russia. Instead, the five Central Asian states opted for what the scholars Timur Dadabaev and Shigeto Sonoda described as “strategic silence”. This type of reaction was manifested not only through the absence of an official stance, but also by a lack of public acknowledgement that the war was taking place. At most, in the following months, Central Asian politicians made vague statements calling for peace in Ukraine but without specifying on whose terms, and why there was no peace in the first place. They also abstained from voting on resolutions in the United Nations related to the invasion. The representatives of Turkmenistan even left the venue when voting was about to take place.

While officially maintaining neutrality, in practice the reactions of countries in the region towards the evolving conflict have been more complex and largely pragmatic, especially in economic terms. On the one hand, the governments denied helping Russia evade US and EU sanctions. On the other hand, a 2026 report published by the US-based Center for Global Civic and Political Strategies shows that the region has played a crucial role in mitigating the impact of western sanctions on Russia. In particular, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan allowed Russia to circumvent sanctions by redirecting trade flows and providing a backdoor route for imports. Several banks in the region have also been added to western sanctions lists for helping Russia bypass sanctions.

Still, the general unwillingness to openly support Russia by political elites reveals two new trends. One is the region’s attempts to carefully navigate between major powers in international politics, without antagonizing neither Russia nor the West. The other is an increasing resistance to being internationally considered Russia’s “backyard”. 

Russia’s war comes home

The attitudes to Russia’s war on Ukraine began to shift when this conflict started concerning Central Asian governments and citizens directly. In the face of a lack of expected support, Russia developed new methods of putting pressure and punishing the region. Russian high-level politicians, thinkers, prominent media figures and bloggers have started repeatedly questioning Central Asia’s sovereignty. This is particularly true concerning Kazakhstan, which has become the subject of a coordinated campaign aiming to undermine its territorial integrity and right to statehood. To give an example, in August 2022, the former Russian President Dmitriy Medvedev called Kazakhstan an “artificial state” and alleged that northern parts of this country historically belonged to Russia.

Over the next few years, such narratives were regularly repeated by several State Duma deputies who claimed that northern parts of Kazakhstan were a gift from Russia, and alleged that they could be taken back. Although the Russian government did not announce any military plans against Kazakhstan, some prominent figures suggested that the country should be the subject of the next “special military operation” – which was the official Kremlin term used for the invasion of Ukraine. Albeit to a lesser extent, these threats were echoed towards Uzbekistan. For example, in December 2023 Russian nationalist politicians suggested annexing Uzbekistan. While the Russian government distanced itself from these claims after Tashkent summoned its ambassador, it is evident that such claims can only be made today with the government’s support.

The mass labour migration from Central Asia to Russia, comprising over four million people, became another tool of exercising pressure on the region. Apart from coercing Central Asian states to support Russia internationally, and symbolically demonstrating Russia’s leverage over the region, the targeting of Central Asian labourers became a way to find a scapegoat for Russia’s social and economic problems. The hardships and legal predicaments experienced by Central Asian migrants in Russia are by no means a new phenomenon. They date back long before the threshold year of 2022 and have been well documented in academic literature, human rights reports and journalistic accounts. Nonetheless, recent turbulence in Russia has resulted in a rise of xenophobia in both political circles and society alike. This significantly aggravated the already precarious living and working conditions of Central Asian migrants.

The intensified backlash against migrants has consisted of racial profiling and violent police raids in public and private places. Far-right activist groups such as Russkaya obshchina (Russian Community), which emerged in several Russian cities and obtained the explicit support of state authorities, have actively participated in raids and checking migrants’ documents in public spaces. These groups are also active on social media platforms, such as Telegram, where they promote and shape anti-migrant views. Furthermore, migrants became targets of large-scale drafting campaigns aiming at boosting Russian manpower in its war against Ukraine.

Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reported that as of 2025, over 2,000 citizens of Uzbekistan and more than 930 of Tajikistan, nearly all of whom were previously labour migrants in Russia, were fighting in Ukraine alongside Russian troops. In many cases, migrants’ families claimed that these men were coerced and joined the Russian army under enormous pressure or blackmailing. This forced enlistment tactic also concerned migrants who were naturalized as Russian citizens and risked being stripped of Russian citizenship had they rejected to join the military. These deepening hierarchies with Russia inevitably resulted in Central Asia changing its international outlook. Without any doubt, Central Asian states do not wish to fully distance themselves from Russia or further antagonize Moscow. Yet it has become clear that these countries have started to carefully manage their relations with the hegemon, all while quietly reshaping their foreign and domestic policies.

Shifting orientations

The ongoing geopolitical reorientation in Central Asia is visible in four simultaneous and deeply interconnected trends. The first one concerns Central Asian states actively diversifying and expanding international partnerships beyond Russia and China, notably towards Europe, the Middle East and East Asia. This happens mainly through economic cooperation. Importantly, this diversification is a two-way process. Increasingly strained relations between Russia and Central Asia have not only made Central Asian leaders look for new partnerships but also motivated other major and middle powers to deepen relations with the region.

As an example, since 2022 the EU and European countries have become more interested in Central Asia and have attempted to pull the region out of Russia’s geopolitical orbit. As Europe aimed to decrease its dependence on Russian oil and gas, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan gained new significance as energy producers and exporters. In an attempt to bypass Russia’s infrastructure, Central Asia started to be seen as a prospective transport route and became part of the so-called Middle Corridor. This repositioned Central Asia’s role in Europe, turning the region into a promising business partner rather than solely a recipient of EU development aid, which has been the case for the last three decades. In 2025, the first EU-Central Asia summit took place and the EU announced investments worth up to ten billion euros in the region. It is also symbolic that the EU started calling this partnership a “strategic partnership”, which mirrors and reappropriates Russia’s rhetoric towards its post-Soviet neighbours. Consequently, bilateral relations accelerated between European countries and Central Asia. For example, two “Germany-Central Asia” summits took place in 2023 and 2024. Yet it remains to be seen to what extent this enhanced EU-Central Asia cooperation continues only as rhetoric or as a new practice in the future.

Secondly, given the mistreatment of labour migrants and their strategic use by Russia, the three migrant-sending countries, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan, started searching for new destinations to redirect the flow of labourers. These workers have relied exclusively on the Russian market over the last three decades. From the perspective of these three governments, providing employment for such an amount of people would not be feasible in the absence of sufficient workplaces at home. This process of diversifying migration destinations has been driven simultaneously by migrants, who have started exploring new markets and establishing diasporic networks. Their governments have also begun to pilot organized recruitment schemes in countries facing a shortage of labour. The preferred destinations include Western and Eastern Europe, Persian Gulf countries, South Korea and Japan. For instance, the statistics published by the Office for Foreigners in Poland show that as of August 2026 nearly 11,000 Uzbek, 3,000 Tajik, and 2,000 Kyrgyz citizens live in the country. These are but small numbers compared to the volume of migration flows to Russia. At the same time, if we compare this data to 2021, when only 126 Uzbek, 84 Tajik, and 46 Kyrgyz citizens resided in Poland, we see a rapidly developing migration network. Regardless of the numbers, the diversification of destinations is in any case indicative of Central Asian states’ attempts to diminish their dependence on Russia.

Third, the ongoing geopolitical reorientation in Central Asia is characterized by increased intergovernmental cooperation within the region. Previously, regional cooperation in Central Asia has been largely shaped through external involvement, namely actors such as the EU that promoted regionalism through its funding schemes dedicated to the region rather than to bilateral cooperation. But given that state sovereignty and non-interference in domestic affairs have been crucial elements of local political cultures, Central Asian regionalism was defined by weak institutionalization over the last three decades. Growing friction with Russia following its invasion of Ukraine served as a catalyst to deepen these intraregional ties through joint high-level fora and meetings. These events allowed the states to address regional quarrels, such as border disputes between Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan, without external intermediaries. This trend signals that Central Asia is not anymore counting on Russia as a mediating force. It is also not anymore welcoming Russia’s interference, realizing the potential of the countries’ national sovereignty in the region and beyond.

Finally, deteriorating relations with Russia accelerated historiographical revisionism. Both governments and local intellectuals have been engaging more openly in a reinterpretation of established historical accounts concerning the Soviet and pre-Soviet past of Central Asia. Although previously the dominant view held that Soviet power had been a force of good for the region, in recent years postcolonial perspectives and decolonizing discourses started to gain momentum. By way of illustration, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan rehabilitated the Basmachi. This was an anti-Russian and anti-Soviet resistance movement in the 1910s and 1920s that was condemned in Soviet historiography. Similarly, Uzbekistan started promoting its Jadid heritage. This reformatory Muslim intellectual movement, active in the region between the late 19th and early 20th century, was purged by Stalin. Meanwhile, Kazakhstan engaged in a re-evaluation of the Kazakh famine from the 1920s. At that time, between 1.3 and 2.3 million people died as a result of forced collectivization and decentralization undertaken by the Soviet regime. These critical revaluations of Soviet-era dogmas met with Russia’s resistance, whereby several Russian prominent figures dismissed them by calling them dangerous anti-Soviet and anti-Russia propaganda.

These four trends will not utterly reshape domestic and foreign policies in Central Asia. Still, it is important to recognize that a pro-Russian status quo has begun to change, and the early rumblings of change are becoming more visible.

Changes in a region resistant to change

The drive to maintain positive relations with Russia has been a stable feature of Central Asian countries since the Soviet collapse. While a lot has changed since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, it would be naïve to expect that this picture will diametrically change. Strained relations with Russia are by no means synonymous with Central Asia breaking out of the Russian orbit. Likely, Russia is there to stay as the region’s crucial international partner.

At the same time, the existing power asymmetries with Russia are not anymore synonymous with Central Asia’s submissive attitudes and compliance. The diversification of foreign policy options and partnerships has clearly started, and this is accompanied by revisions concerning Russia’s role in the past, present and arguably also future of Central Asia. Remarkably, these processes are driven not only by policymakers, as one could expect given the nature of governance in this region, but also from the bottom up by intellectuals, labour migrants and businesses.

 

Karolina Kluczewska is an assistant professor at the Institute of Political Studies of the Polish Academy of Sciences. She also remains affiliated with the Robert Zajonc Institute for Social Studies at the University of Warsaw, as well as the University of St Andrews, where she obtained her PhD in international relations.