ASTANA -- Two international forums this month -- one in Kazakhstan and the other in Russia -- have very different messages.
This year’s inaugural 2023 Astana International Forum (AIF) represented a high-level opportunity for Kazakhstan to remind the world that the oil-producing country, though an ally of Russia’s, is not always on the same page as Moscow.
The AIF on June 8 opened its doors to ministers, CEOs from global companies, and chiefs from the Bretton Woods institutions to hold two days of discussions on issues ranging from the green energy transition and food security to artificial intelligence and the future of multilateralism.
The overarching theme of the June 14-17 St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, by contrast, will be a rather statist-sounding “sovereign development.”
Moreover, for the first time in the quarter-century history of an event that became known to the world as “Russia’s Davos,” journalists from what Moscow calls “unfriendly countries” -- ones that enforce sanctions against Russia for its invasion of Ukraine -- will not be invited.
Kazakhstan No Stranger To Talking Shops
The AIF is similar in format and themes to the Astana Economic Forum, which was held annually from 2008 to 2019.
Luca Anceschi, a lecturer at Britain’s University of Glasgow, said it has not always been clear whether such events are more about “image making” or drumming up foreign investment for Kazakhstan.
But the war in Ukraine “makes both prongs -- image making and attracting foreign investment -- equally relevant” for the country.
Kazakh President Qasym-Zhomart Toqaev’s task is to “navigate Eurasia’s perilous geopolitics, while attracting investment to address the many economic problems faced by his regime,” Anceschi told RFE/RL.
'Unprecedented Geopolitical Tensions'
Toqaev, a career diplomat, cut an internationalist figure in his June 8 address to the AIF, bemoaning “unprecedented geopolitical tensions” but maintaining that there was still “a strong and clear imperative to come together.”
Since the February 2022 invasion of Ukraine began, Kazakhstan has found itself trapped between Western sanctions against its closest trade partner, Russia, and the Kremlin’s obvious irritation over Kazakhstan’s lack of enthusiasm for its war.
Last year’s St. Petersburg economic forum encapsulated those bilateral tensions, when Toqaev -- sitting on stage next to counterpart Vladimir Putin -- calmly explained his reasons for not recognizing Russia-backed “quasi-states” in eastern Ukraine.
Russian President Vladimir Putin (left) and Kazakh President Qasym-Zhomart Toqaev attend a plenary session at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum in June 2022.
Last month, Toqaev appeared to strike out an independent position against Moscow once more when he suggested that Russia and Belarus’s union-state agreement posed a conundrum for other states in the Eurasian Economic Union, which Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Armenia are also members of.
“Forgive me, but even nuclear weapons are now [shared] one for two,” Toqaev said at a May 24 meeting of the trade bloc in Moscow, while pressing the case for more economic -- and less political -- integration.
Kazakhstan’s government seems to have wanted Toqaev’s anxiety to be heard abroad.
The following day, a foreign communications firm claiming to represent Astana in media relations wrote to RFE/RL’s correspondent in Almaty offering briefings with Kazakh officials on Toqaev’s comments.
The e-mail's subject line described Toqaev as "stinging" Putin and Belarusian leader Alyaksandr Lukashenka with his observations.
Yet earlier that month, Toqaev had joined both men, the other four Central Asian leaders, and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian in a much-criticized show of support for Moscow at the Kremlin's May 9 commemorations of the Soviet victory over Germany in World War II.
'Just Because Investors Are Leaving Russia…’
Last year’s St. Petersburg International Economic Forum that Toqaev attended highlighted both the end of the event’s billing as the top Eurasian talking shop and Russia’s more general fall into isolation.
In a light-hearted commentary on the history of the forum, the Latvian-based Russian journalism collective The Insider recalled the heady days of early editions of the forum, when Kremlin-friendly oligarchs would rock up to events in their yachts, as escort services did a rich trade at the event’s luxurious galas.
Even after Russia’s annexation of Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula in 2014, the stated value of deals signed at the forum and the number of guests kept rising.
In 2016, then-UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon spoke at the event, while in 2018 and 2019, French President Emmanuel Macron and Chinese leader Xi Jinping, respectively, added their star power.
But last year, in addition to Toqaev, guests included representatives of Afghanistan’s unrecognized Taliban government and the leaders of the Russian-occupied regions of Ukraine.
First Deputy Chairman of the Afghan Chamber of Commerce and Investment Mohammad Yonus Momand attends the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum in St. Petersburg, Russia, in June 2022.
The diminished guest list last year showed how the forum had transitioned from “the hope of domestic capitalism into a one-man show with fake adoration from the subjugated audience,” The Insider wrote.
The Ukraine war has caused no shortage of problems for Kazakhstan -- food inflation ran at more than 20 percent last year -- but it has also offered opportunities.
In December, authorities said that 20 international companies had relocated from Russia to Kazakhstan and hundreds more were considering the move.
A Deutsche Welle report published in March quoted Arsen Tomsky, the Russian-born CEO of InDriver -- the Silicon Valley ride-hailing company -- as explaining his decision to relocate workers from Russia to Kazakhstan because the country was now “the most suitable and stable place in the region.”
But the same report raised doubts about the government’s claims of a massive inflow of investors.
On the sidelines of the AIF, a foreign business consultant with years of experience working with the Kazakh market was cautious about its investment potential.
“Just because investors are leaving Russia, it doesn’t mean they will go to Kazakhstan,” the business consultant told RFE/RL, requesting anonymity. “There are other places they can go. Outside of oil, this is a relatively small economy.”
Meanwhile, ordinary Kazakhs might be skeptical of the value of the forum and other events like it.
On the eve of the powwow, dozens of residents of one of Astana’s districts staged a rare protest, blocking a road after spending more than a week without running water in their homes as a heat wave sent temperatures past 35 degrees Celsius.
The district’s top official asked for calm and told them that his own family was “washing according to the schedule,” which saw the water supply limited to just a few hours a day, RFE/RL’s Kazakh Service reported.
Assel Tutumlu of the Near East University in Northern Cyprus predicted that the economic impact of holding the AIF will be “lots of pledges, fewer deals, and a bit of a drain on the state budget.”
“Of course, this is not the Davos [World Economic Forum] in Switzerland. But it is still an important opportunity for the Kazakh elite to strengthen connections with fellow members of the global elite. And this is who these events mostly benefit -- the elites,” he told RFE/RL.