Tokayev’s tightrope: Can Kazakhstan profit from Russia’s retreat?

KAZAKHSTAN

As Kazakhstan prepares for a tightly controlled election, its president is consolidating power at home while courting Moscow, Beijing and the West in an intensifying battle for Central Asia.

ON 23 August, voters in Kazakhstan will elect a new parliament under a constitution President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev says will move the country away from “super-presidential” rule.

Few expect the result to threaten his authority.

The newly created Adilet party is forecast to win as many as 120 of the 145 seats in the new unicameral parliament, known as the Kurultai.

Formed only this year, Adilet has absorbed Amanat, the party that dominated Kazakhstan’s politics under different names for more than a quarter of a century. It is led by the former head of Tokayev’s presidential administration and claims to have received more than 828,000 membership applications.

One July poll placed its support at 64.8%, with each of the six other parties contesting the election attracting approximately 5% or less.

But the new constitution and parliamentary elections are highly unlikely to facilitate genuine democratisation.

Instead, Guest says, the changes are likely to cement Tokayev’s position and distance his presidency from the legacy of Nursultan Nazarbayev, who ruled Kazakhstan for almost three decades before selecting Tokayev as his successor in 2019.

Amanat was closely associated with the Nazarbayev era. Absorbing it into Adilet allows Tokayev to inherit its nationwide machinery and support base while presenting the result as a new political movement.

Kazakhstan’s Constitutional Court has also ruled that Tokayev may seek another seven-year term because his current mandate began under the previous constitution.

It means reforms presented as limiting presidential power could ultimately allow Tokayev, 73, to remain in office beyond 2029.

The election also comes as Kazakhstan assumes an increasingly valuable position in the contest between Russia, China and the West for influence and resources across Central Asia.

“Central Asia and the South Caucasus are at the frontier of great-power competition,” Guest says.

Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine has reduced Moscow’s ability to project and protect its influence across the former Soviet Union. China, the EU and the US have sought to exploit the opening.

Kazakhstan produces 39% of the world’s uranium and accounts for almost half of global natural uranium exports.

It also possesses major reserves of chromium, manganese and copper. In 2025, it announced the discovery of a rare-earth deposit estimated at more than 20 million tonnes which, if confirmed, could place it behind only China and Brazil in terms of reserves.

In 2025, Kazakhstan signed agreements worth $17bn with the US and secured a €12bn investment package from the EU. No comparable package emerged from a Central Asia-Russia summit held that October.

But Kazakhstan is not Armenia or Moldova, where governments attempting to escape Moscow’s influence have faced economic pressure, disinformation and destabilisation campaigns.

Astana has instead pursued what Guest describes as a “multi-vector foreign policy”, maintaining close commercial and security relations with Russia while deepening engagement with China, Europe, the US, Türkiye and neighbouring Central Asian states.

“Russia’s ability to project and protect its influence has been waning since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine,” she says.

“But Kazakhstan has not iced Russia out, and it is highly unlikely to do so because maintaining good relations with Russia remains in Kazakhstan’s interests.”

The two countries share the world’s longest continuous land border. Russia remains one of Kazakhstan’s largest trading partners, while both are members of the Russia-led Collective Security Treaty Organisation and Eurasian Economic Union.

Moscow’s importance was underlined in May, when Rosatom signed a $16.5bn agreement to construct Kazakhstan’s first nuclear power plant after overcoming rival bids from France’s EDF, South Korea’s KHNP and China’s CNNC.

Beijing has since been selected to lead a second project, illustrating Astana’s determination to avoid dependence upon any one partner.

Kazakhstan has nevertheless demonstrated limits to its support for Moscow.

It has not recognised Russia’s annexation of Ukrainian territory and Tokayev recently made a public appeal to President Vladimir Putin for the conflict to be frozen to allow negotiations.

Guest cautions against interpreting this as a political confrontation with the Kremlin.

Increased attacks around the Black Sea have threatened infrastructure used to carry Kazakh oil to international markets, giving Astana a direct commercial interest in reducing hostilities.

“It was a very pragmatic statement rather than a political one,” she says.

“The conflict is beginning to affect Kazakhstan more, particularly when it comes to its oil exports.”

The strategy has so far allowed Kazakhstan to benefit from competing powers without forcing it to choose between them.

Western governments want access to its critical minerals as they seek to reduce their dependence on China.

Beijing regards Kazakhstan as a crucial trading and transit partner, while Moscow needs to demonstrate that it retains influence in a region it considers part of its traditional sphere.

Guest assesses that Russia’s influence has not diminished sufficiently for the Kremlin to consider destabilising Kazakhstan.

Moscow would also risk producing the very outcome it wants to prevent.

If relations were to deteriorate, Russia would be more likely to employ economic restrictions, diplomatic pressure and information operations than direct military coercion.

Russian nationalist figures have previously questioned Kazakhstan’s territorial integrity and pointed to its sizeable ethnic Russian population, particularly in the north.

However, Guest describes separatist sentiment as “fringe and limited” and says Moscow has little reason to exploit it while relations remain cordial.

The greater test may come after the war in Ukraine.

A settlement favourable to Moscow could embolden Russia to assert its influence across the former Soviet Union more forcefully, just as Western and Chinese competition for Central Asia’s resources intensifies.

Tokayev’s political consolidation may provide continuity as Kazakhstan navigates that contest, but it also places the country’s strategy increasingly in the hands of one man.

For now, Kazakhstan’s strength lies in remaining useful to everyone without becoming wholly dependent upon anyone.

“If Russia moved too aggressively against Kazakhstan, it could alarm the other Central Asian states,” Guest says.

“That could make Russia’s influence in the region even weaker.”