Putin’s visit to Astana: a face-saving show and business necessity

11.11.2023, 06:17 exclusive.kz

When Russian President Putin and his delegation arrived at President Tokayev’s residence in Astana on Thursday, the Kazakh leader greeted them in Kazakh.

The Russian guests were caught by surprise and scrambled to put on headphones so they could hear the Russian translation.

Putin’s spokesman Peskov’s face showed bewilderment, and Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov looked even more stone-faced than usual.

Tokayev quickly switched to Russian, but his small but meaningful gesture said a lot about what is happening in relations between Russia and Kazakhstan right now.

Isolated and under the pressure of economic sanctions, Russia depends on certain favours from Kazakhstan – from continuing to host Putin as a state leader to helping to mitigate the impact of the sanctions.

In remarks during the visit, Putin described Kazakhstan as “not just an ally, but the closest ally”.

Tokayev personally met Putin at the airport and put on a formal welcoming ceremony for him at his Ak Orda residence – plush carpets, a guard of honour, a military band and all.

On the eve of Putin’s visit both countries’ official newspapers carried lengthy interviews with the other country’s leaders to play up the importance of the upcoming event.

Putin’s visit followed the visits to Central Asia by the French and Turkish leaders. In September the Central Asian leaders also had meetings with the US and German leaders.

It could be suggested that by his visit Putin wanted to signal that the Kremlin is not giving up its strategic interests in the region.

However, the main purpose behind Putin’s trip to Kazakhstan could be more trivial — to ensure Astana’s continued help with evading Western sanctions — allowing ‘parallel imports’ and relocation of Russian businesses to Kazakhstan.

In 2022, Kazakh ‘parallel imports’ to Russia amounted to an estimated 10-20bn dollars, reports say.

According to a Forbes.kz report the number of Russian companies in Kazakhstan increased threefold since 2019, from 6,700 to 18,600.

Since March 2022 there has been “a boom” in registrations of Russian legal entities in Kazakhstan, the report said. As a result, currently Russian companies make up 45 percent of all companies in Kazakhstan with foreign capital.

Mostly these are small businesses, but “practically all” significant assets in the mining and transportation sectors sold by Kazakh oligarchs lately were bought by Russians, Forbes.kz said.

Political observer Dosym Satpayev said that in his interview ahead of the visit Putin sounded “first of all like a promoter of the interests of Russian business.”

Whether forced by Western economic sanctions or not, Russian businesses could see serious investment opportunities in Kazakhstan and the rest of Central Asia, which is rich in energy and other natural resources.

The Kazakh government and Gazprom have signed a strategic cooperation agreement this year. In October Gazprom started shipping natural gas to Uzbekistan via Kazakhstan.

Central Aisa is also an important transit corridor for Russia’s trade with southern Asia.

However, it remains to be seen whether Tokayev will speak Kazakh next time he receives Putin or another Russian leader.