Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan Resist Russia's Coalition-Building In 'Sovereignty Test'

ALMATY, Kazakhstan -- It seems ironic that just as Russian President Vladimir Putin was working to counter perceptions of his country's diplomatic isolation, Moscow would face two setbacks in a region where it was once confident of loyalty: Central Asia.

In the space of a few days -- and within a week of the 16th annual BRICS summit that has taken on particular geopolitical importance for Putin -- both Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan rejected opportunities to join multilateral groups close to the Kremlin's heart.

In the case of Kazakhstan, that group was BRICS itself, which Astana said it would not apply to become a full member of, preferring to retain its observer status.

For Uzbekistan, it was the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU), a troubled, five-member trade bloc whose emergence played a foundational role in Russia's decade-long rift with Ukraine.

Both countries remain close to Moscow and, as such, this can hardly be classed as a mutiny.

But it highlights the tricky position the region has found itself in since 2022 of trying to distance itself from the threat of secondary sanctions relating to Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine while also attempting not to incur Moscow's wrath.

But analysts say these latest shows of independence by Astana and Tashkent have already led to great displeasure in the Kremlin.

Kazakhstan Says Better Off Without BRICS

Four countries -- Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, and the United Arab Emirates -- attended the summit in Kazan on October 22 as new members of BRICS, whose name comes from the first five members of the organization: Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa.

Several other countries have either applied for membership or are mulling accession.

In an interview with RFE/RL, Stewart Patrick, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said Russia is hopeful the expanding organization "will be a vehicle to challenge the Western-dominated international order and particularly the dominance of the United States."

Kazakhstan, however, is watching the bandwagon rather than jumping on it.

In an October 16 interview with the private media outlet Tengri News, President Qasym-Zhomart Toqaev's spokesman, Berik Uali, said that while Kazakhstan had been sounded out over membership in the organization, it would not be applying for such "in the foreseeable future."

He added the decision was made based on, among other things, "issues related to the development prospects of this association."

Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoev (right) welcomes Kazakh counterpart Qasym-Zhomart Toqaev at an official ceremony in Tashkent in April 2019.

Uali also stressed that Kazakhstan viewed the United Nations as "the sole platform for addressing crucial global issues" but noted the global body and its Security Council are "not free of shortcomings" and need reforms.

Kazakhstan has been credited with skillfully navigating the darkening geopolitical skies since 2022 -- a remit well suited to Toqaev, a former foreign minister and onetime UN deputy secretary-general.

Astana is formally a Russian ally, insofar as it is still a member of the Moscow-headquartered Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), as well as one of the founding members of the Russian-dominated EEU, where Armenia, Belarus, and Kyrgyzstan are also members.

When German Chancellor Olaf Scholz visited Astana last month for talks with leaders of the five Central Asian countries, Toqaev raised eyebrows by calling Russia "militarily undefeatable" and urging Scholz and other world leaders to consider a China-Brazil peace plan to end the Ukraine war.

That proposal is strongly opposed by Kyiv, while Putin has named China, Brazil, and India as potential mediators in any peace talks over Ukraine.

But the question of actually joining BRICS became "an exercise in asserting sovereignty," according to Nargis Kassenova, director of the program on Central Asia at Harvard University.

Chinese President Xi Jinping, Toqaev, and Putin (left to right) attend the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit in Astana on July 4.

Kassenova argues that both Russia and China -- Kazakhstan's other big partner -- would have strongly encouraged Astana to be part of the group.

"Having Kazakhstan, an aspiring middle power, join [BRICS] would increase the gravitas of the organization. [But] it would also reposition Kazakhstan further from the West and closer to the proponents of the 'multipolar' world to this or that degree challenging U.S. hegemony," she told RFE/RL.

And that move might have been too confrontational for a country that likes to maintain strong ties with the West and "does not yet have the weight and security of countries like Brazil, India, South Africa or Turkey," Kassenova added, naming yet another country considering joining BRICS.

Uzbekistan's EU Flirtation Ends

For Kassenova, Kazakhstan's repeated references to the UN system serve as a "normative foundation of its [diplomatic] balancing act."

But Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov showed his bemusement with the reasoning in Moscow’s first official response to Kazakhstan's position on October 21, where he stressed BRICS' role as a force for good for Central Asian countries.

Lavrov pointed out that Kazakhstan's cooperation with the UN had not been hindered by the other organizations that it is currently a member of, such as the CSTO, the EEU, and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization that Russia and China also belong to.

Nor does its membership in the five-country Organization of Turkic States (OTS), which "at the initiative of Turkey, is now strengthening ties and is on the rise," Lavrov said.

The OTS was a symbolic organization before 2022. Since the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, however, the OTS has indeed been "on the rise."

Russia-centered groupings, meanwhile, have become more toxic, arguably none more so in the context of the sanctions affecting Russia and loyal ally Belarus than the EEU, whose provisions make the movement of goods more difficult to track once they enter a member state like Kazakhstan.

The decision of whether to join this trade group was once facing Ukraine, with then-President Viktor Yanukovych's decision to choose closer ties with Russia over an EU Association Agreement sowing the seeds for the Euromaidan protest movement that led to his overthrow.

Ukraine's nonmembership in the bloc diminished its potential, and for a long time it has looked like the EEU'S sixth member would be Uzbekistan.

Pro-business President Shavkat Mirziyoev initially took a much fonder view of the organization than predecessor Islam Karimov, who obliquely condemned it as an attempt to reform the Soviet Union.

But Mirziyoev was adamant Uzbekistan needed time to prepare for the full removal of trade barriers, and top Russian official Valentina Matviyenko embarrassed Tashkent into silence when she announced after a visit to the country that "the president of Uzbekistan has made a decision…the approval process will not be delayed."

It now appears the decision is a negative one, with the deputy speaker of the Uzbek parliament, Akmal Saidov, announcing Tashkent's decision to remain an observer state had come after a study of more than 1,000 EEU documents.

"Regarding our Kazakh colleagues, their country has received very few benefits from joining the [EEU]," Saidov added pointedly.

The timing for that observation could hardly have been better, coming just as Moscow's agricultural safety regulator Rosselkhoznadzor announced a ban on the import of a range of foodstuffs -- including tomatoes, melons, and wheat -- from Kazakhstan.

While Rosselkhoznadzor cited Kazakhstan's failure to correct faults in "phytosanitary safety," foreign media covering the ban linked the measure to Kazakhstan's nonentry into BRICS.

Alisher Ilkhamov, an Uzbek political analyst and founder of the Central Asia Due Diligence research company, argues that Uzbekistan has similarly faced Russian pressure for its decision not to join the EEU, which he said has probably been known to the Kremlin for some time.

One manifestation of this pressure might have been Russia's decision to wade into an Uzbek school classroom incident involving the Russian language last month, he said.

Another might have been the more recent call of a Russian lawmaker to impose a visa regime on Uzbek citizens, potentially affecting millions of labor migrants.

"Uzbekistan is still very much economically dependent on Russia, but with Ukraine, and sanctions, the EEU has become much less attractive," Ilkhamov told RFE/RL.

"If before Russia was the best logistical route to the EU, now this route has some problems and [Tashkent] is seeking new trade corridors," he said.