Russia strives to drag Kazakhstan, as well as Turkiye, Uzbekistan, China and some others into its effort to organize the flow of parallel (gray) imports, which effort poses risks of secondary sanctions against Kazakhstan. Those risks remain, like Damocles’s Sword above our heads.

A famous Kazakh political observer discusses the risks of secondary sanctions against Kazakhstan. Literal translation below:

Inspecting Visit

“…Finally, this week Elizabeth Rosenberg, Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury, Matthew S. Axelrod, Assistant Secretary for US Export Administration, and David Reed, UK Director for Sanctions paid a visit to Kazakhstan and voiced specific warnings. Ms. Rosenberg, particularly said Kremlin instructed its intelligence service to seek ways to work through other countries and that that service was seeking international companies, operating through networks of intermediaries and fake entities, that would help Russian evade Western sanctions.  Such companies were created recently, without physical addresses and those companies performed questionable transactions. Also, Ms. Rosenberg said that risks were growing in regards to the Republic of Kazakhstan, Kazakh companies, and Kazakh banks…

I understand, that Russian intelligence services infiltrated Kazakh bodies of statehood. Because, despite numerous warnings from Kazakh businesses and local observers about growing sanction risks, the government was actively dragging this country not only into gray imports but also supporting of relocation of Russian companies to Kazakhstan, as well as the establishment of companies by Russians in Kazakhstan…”

Numbers Speak for itself

Official sources report, that by 1 September 2022, there were 15.4 thousand Russian companies registered in Kazakhstan – particularly in all economic sectors. 

Kazakh experts reported that since the beginning of Russo-Ukrainian war, more than 5 thousand Russian and Belorussian trucks underwent re-registration in Kazakhstan.  In the result of that, Kazakh cargo transportation companies almost lost some 70% of the international freight market.

In other words, Russian and Belorussian freight forwarding companies used Kazakh registration to evade and bypass sanctions, thus finding ways to deliver goods to Europe and backwards, using Kazakh quotas.  Nobody even thought of protecting Kazakh companies, until they raised that issue before the eyes of the government.

If the war in Ukraine is a depletion war, then it was clear already in the last year that one of the main threats would be Russia’s effort to glutton the Kazakh economy, piece by piece, to make it a part of its own economy under sanctions.

The very first attack of that gluttony was performed in 2014, when Nazarbayev brought Kazakhstan into that trap called Eurasian Economic Union. We were in the python’s mouth, now we are proceeding deeper into its stomach”.