The US Secretary of State will meet next week with representatives from Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Turkmenistan, countries with strong ties to Russia and China.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken will travel to Asia earlier this week to meet with his counterparts from the five former Soviet republics – Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan – in the Kazakh capital, Astana, on Tuesday. The United States hopes to strengthen its footprint in these countries, caught between its powerful Russian neighbor and the growing influence of China.
Washington has no illusions that these five countries are likely to suddenly shed their historical partners, but the United States plays, as elsewhere in Africa or Latin America, the card of the “reliable partner”, capable of putting on the table things other than Russia or China.
“I think they realize that Russia is a threat to them”
In the midst of the war in Ukraine, the leaders of these Central Asian countries are on a tightrope due to formal defense agreements with Moscow and the economic and security weight of Russia, and have thus adopted a position of balance in the dispute. The five former Soviet republics abstained or did not take part in the vote Thursday at the UN General Assembly on a resolution calling for the departure of Russian troops from Ukraine.
According to Jennifer Brick Murtazashvili, of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, “there is a real desire among the leaders of these countries to get away from Russia. I think they realize that Russia is a threat to them but because of geography, they can’t do much about it, and their economic situation doesn’t give them many options.” None of these countries has access to the sea.
“So I think there is a real opportunity for the United States to be creative, and to engage with their leaders,” adds the expert.
“Russia has always been and remains the main strategic partner”
Kazakhstan, which shares a border some 7,500 kilometers long with Russia, is at the forefront of its complex relationship with Moscow. Its president, Kassym-Jomart Tokaïev, who will have an interview with Antony Blinken, went to Moscow at the end of November where he reaffirmed that “Russia has always been and remains the main strategic partner”.
However, he allowed tens of thousands of Russians to enter his country fleeing the partial mobilization decreed by Vladimir Putin at the end of September. And Kazakh diplomacy refused to support the Russian invasion and to recognize the annexation of Ukrainian territories claimed by Moscow.
For his part, Tajikistan’s President, Emomali Rakhmon, caused a stir in October in a video that went viral showing him berating Vladimir Putin, accusing Russia of ignoring the interests of Central Asian countries.
The last visit by a US Secretary of State to Central Asia dates back to that of Mike Pompeo in 2020, under Donald Trump. He then urged these countries to sever their ties with China because of the repression of the Uyghurs in Xinjiang province.
