Kazakhstan
Russia asks Kazakhstan for petrol, and the supplier becomes the supplicant
Russia is in talks to buy about 50,000 tonnes of petrol from Kazakhstan as Ukrainian strikes knock out its refineries one by one. For years Russia was the region’s fuel backstop. That assumption is now running in reverse, and it is reshaping how Astana thinks about its own supply.
Kazakhstan signs into America’s AI bloc, the same week it was China’s guest of honour
Kazakhstan joined Pax Silica, the US-led coalition to build AI supply chains outside China, signing the accession in Washington on 27 June. It is the first Central Asian state to join. The signature is days old, and it lands in the same week Kazakhstan was guest of honour at China’s Eurasia expo and agreed to route its disaster data through Xinjiang.
At China’s Eurasia expo, Kazakhstan is guest of honour and the trade runs one way
Kazakhstan was the guest of honour last week at the China-Eurasia Expo in Urumqi, where Astana and Beijing set a target of $100 billion in annual trade. China’s trade with Central Asia passed $100 billion for the first time in 2025. The flows, and the advantage, point mostly one way.
China gives Central Asia eyes in the sky for its disasters. The data lands in Xinjiang
China and three Central Asian states agreed last week to build a shared constellation of satellites to watch for earthquakes, landslides and the floods that come off melting glaciers. The region needs the warning. The satellites’ data will be processed at a computing centre in Xinjiang.
Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan put their border crossings on a 24-hour clock
Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan are moving border checkpoints to round-the-clock operation, qazinform reported on 26 June. It is a small administrative change with a real effect on trade: a border open all night moves more goods than one that closes at five.
Hormuz shut again, and the southern route Kazakhstan is building sits behind the chokepoint
A cargo ship was hit off Oman on 25 June, the UN paused its evacuation of 11,000 stranded sailors, and Iran told vessels to use only its approved lanes through the Strait of Hormuz. For Central Asia the reminder is sharp: the wartime oil premium can return overnight, and the southern trade route Kazakhstan is betting on passes through the strait that keeps closing.
Kazakhstan wants to host Central Asia’s AI. The bottleneck is electricity
A Nasdaq-listed firm has floated a 1 gigawatt AI data centre in Kazakhstan, one of several AI projects Astana is courting in its self-declared Year of Artificial Intelligence. A gigawatt is a large power station. Kazakhstan already struggles to keep the power it has.
At Summer Davos, China shifts from selling to Kazakhstan to building inside it
Kazakhstan’s prime minister spent Summer Davos working a line of Chinese firms, from carmakers to battery giants. The thread running through the meetings is localisation: China moving from exporting goods to Kazakhstan toward manufacturing them there.
Before the reactors, the wires: Central Asia loses up to a fifth of its power in aging grids
While Astana and Tashkent pour concrete for nuclear plants, the EDB used its Almaty meeting to point at the cheaper problem underneath: aging generation and grids that lose as much as 20% of the electricity they carry.
A Russia-anchored development bank is widening its map. Oman is joining, Mongolia is in talks
At its annual meeting in Almaty, the Eurasian Development Bank said Oman will join this year and Mongolia is in negotiations, with its portfolio now around $22 billion. A bank built by Moscow and Astana is collecting members well beyond the post-Soviet space, at a moment when one of its founders is under sanctions.
Central Asia is going nuclear on Russian reactors and Russian credit
Uzbekistan has poured the first concrete for its nuclear plant. Kazakhstan has signed a $16.5 billion deal for its own. Both will be built by Rosatom, financed largely by Moscow, and fuelled on Russian terms. The region that talks about loosening its dependence on Russia is pouring four decades of it into the ground.
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Kazakhstan barely notices remittances. For two of its neighbours, they are the economy
New figures show Kazakhstan sent about $376 million abroad in the first four months of 2026 and took in far less. Money wired home by migrants barely registers in its economy. Two doors down, in Dushanbe and Bishkek, the same flow is most of the household budget. One region, two opposite economies.
The Netherlands tops Kazakhstan’s investor table at $125 billion. The figure is mostly a mailing address
Kazakhstan said this week that Dutch investment has passed $125 billion, keeping the Netherlands its largest foreign investor. The same week in Brussels, Tokayev cited $210 billion of European money. Both numbers count a great deal of capital that only stops in Europe on its way through.
Uzbekistan offers Beijing the value-chain deal Kazakhstan offered Brussels
As Tokayev pressed Brussels to process Kazakh minerals inside Kazakhstan, Tashkent was making the same case to Chinese state firms. Two rival buyers are hearing one regional pitch: build the value chain here. Uranium runs through both.
Central Asia tops $600 billion as the EDB gathers in Almaty
The Eurasian Development Bank meets in Almaty on 25 and 26 June behind a flattering number: regional output above $600 billion for the first time, with growth over 6.5%. Beneath the headline sits a harder figure, the cost of the debt that paid for it.
Kazakhstan and the EU signed five agreements in Brussels. The value is in which ones get built
Tokayev flew home from Brussels with a joint statement, a horizontal aviation agreement, a €7.1 billion Airbus order and a pledge to move Kazakhstan up the minerals value chain. After five years of EU and Kazakh frameworks, the signing is the part that comes easily.
The three Syr Darya states lock in their summer water-for-power deal
Energy and water ministers from Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan met in Bishkek and signed a protocol governing water releases and electricity supply for July and August. It is the routine machinery of a bargain the region cannot afford to get wrong: upstream water for downstream power, settled season by season.
Central Asia's luck and Central Asia's road run through the same 50 kilometers
The weekend put two Central Asian stories on the Strait of Hormuz at once. Iran's threat to close it props up the premium on Kazakh oil. Kazakhstan's new port plot at Bandar Abbas depends on it staying open. The same water carries the region's windfall and its future, and they pull in opposite directions.
Kazakhstan secures land for a port base on the Persian Gulf, at Bandar Abbas
Iran has finalized the allocation of a plot for a Kazakh logistics terminal at Shahid Rajaee port in Bandar Abbas, its main gateway on the Gulf. It is a concrete step toward the southern corridor Central Asia has chased for years. The plot sits on the same strait Iran spent the weekend threatening to close.
Iran threatens to close Hormuz again, and the wartime premium ticks back
The talks that collapsed on Friday reconvened at the Burgenstock over the weekend and reported guarded progress. But Iran threatened to shut the Strait of Hormuz once more over Israel's strikes on Lebanon, oil edged back toward $80, and the premium Central Asia had been losing all week stopped fading. The deal is holding on paper and fraying in practice.