Page 72 - bneMagazine March 2023 oil discount

72 Opinion bne March 2023
In October 2022, Tajikistan's President Emomali Rahmon himself publicly rebuked Vladimir Putin, demanding more “respect” for Central Asian countries. / Kremli. ru
Russia is down, but not out,
in Central Asia Maximilian Hess
Russian President Vladimir Putin has long seen Central Asia as Russia’s “most stable region”. He has regularly exerted influence and political pressure over its leaders. However, after decades of stability, the last year has seen Russia’s influence in Central Asia deteriorate at
an unprecedented pace.
Putin’s view of Central Asia as part of Russia’s sphere of influence was not unjustified. During his first 21 years in power, Russian relations remained relatively unchanged with all five of the former Soviet Central Asian states: Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. While the period was not without times of tension – for instance, Kyrgyzstan’s 2005 Tulip Revolution that the Kremlin denounced as a Western-backed “colour revolution,” Turkmenistan’s replacing of Russia as its major gas export route with the China-Central Asia pipeline and repeated spats with late Uzbek dictator Islam Karimov before his passing in 2016 foremost amongst them – at the beginning of 2022 the Kremlin could be confident that it was the pre-eminent power in the region.
Russia’s position was solidified by Kazakhstan’s rapid descent into tumult last January. Protests in Kazakhstan over the cost
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of living were co-opted by officials disgruntled at their loss of influence two-and-a-half years into the transition from long-ruling former president Nursultan Nazarbayev to his handpicked successor, Kassym-Jomart Tokayev. The crisis ended only after Tokayev called on the Kremlin-controlled Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) to intervene. It did so successfully, with Russian forces helping their Kazakh counterparts to crack down on the unrest. China endorsed Putin’s actions and the West hardly objected.
A year later, however, the situation has been recast entirely. Russia has gone from being the dominant power in Central Asia to one whose influence is clearly on the wane. The change has not been wrought by events within Central Asia itself, but rather by Putin’s decision to vastly expand his long-running war against Ukraine on February 24, 2022. The attack laid bare Putin’s militarism and precipitated the most wide-ranging sanctions regime against a large economy since World War II. Putin’s desire for a swift and triumphant march across Ukraine into Kyiv and seizure of its territory east of the Dnieper proved a costly fantasy.
Yet a year later Putin has shown no willingness to abandon