Shifting geopolitical orientations in Central Asia
A pro-Russia orientation has been a stable feature of Central Asia since the region’s independence in 1991. While of crucial importance for Europe, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 initially seemed to be a far-away conflict that would not concern Central Asia directly. And yet, Central Asia’s positive relations with Russia soon began to change.
September 11, 2026 -
Karolina Kluczewska
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Hot TopicsIssue 5 2026Magazine
There are some striking similarities between the five Central Asian states. To name but a few, since their independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, their governance systems have been characterized by a centralization of power, strong presidential authority, state heavy interventions in economy, and close ties between political authority and economic wealth. What also united them was the nature of their entanglement with Russia, which goes far beyond shared Soviet institutional legacies visible in what we could call elite mentalities and contemporary administrative structures.
For the last 35 years, for Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, Russia has been a natural reference point in their domestic and foreign policies. This attitude did not result only from Russia’s simple determination to have a say about their domestic and foreign policies. Rather, it was a two-directional process. Since the Soviet collapse in 1991, the five states continued to see Russia as the Soviet successor state, attributing to this emerging hegemon the right to claim ownership of the shared socialist past and to influence their development paths. Their entanglements with Russia were thus characterized by a belief in Russia’s superiority over Central Asia and Central Asia’s compliance. This largely submissive attitude differentiated Central Asian states from other post-Soviet and post-socialist countries in Eastern Europe and the South Caucasus, where both the official and public attitudes towards Russia have been more ambiguous and often changed over time, oscillating between some sympathy, tolerance and animosity.
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