Kazakhstan turning from Moscow to Beijing and Baku
Regional wars are pushing Kazakhstan into a pivotal role that may reshape Eurasian energy and trade routes.
In a nutshell
- Russian exposure pressures Kazakhstan to diversify export channels
- Closer ties with China may reduce Astana’s dependence on Moscow
- Alternative transport corridors remain insufficient to replace Russian routes
- For comprehensive insights, tune into our AI-powered podcast here
The wars against Iran and Ukraine have geopolitical implications that reach far beyond the immediate theaters of operation. What began as temporary conflict-related disruptions to energy deliveries is becoming a permanent fixture in the reordering of Eurasian shipping and trade routes. One of many secondary effects is being played out in Central Asia, where Kazakhstan is taking center stage.
The country has long been a key regional player: Immediately after the collapse of the Soviet Union, it emerged as a staunch ally of Russia, and when China began expanding its footprint, Astana found ample latitude for playing the two sides against each other.
Two reasons combine to explain why Kazakhstan is currently at the center of Eurasian energy, economic and geopolitical developments and questions of strategic direction. One is its role as a major oil producer, the other is its geographical location, straddling vital transport routes between China and Europe.
The world is hungry for (Kazakh) oil
The oil factor is complex. And it entails both opportunity and urgency.
The obvious opportunity comes from the ongoing global need for reliable oil supplies and the Iran-war-induced spike in oil prices. Both provide windfall gains for all non-Gulf producers. The surge in demand for alternative oil suppliers coincidentally bolsters Astana’s position: The Kazakh oil industry in recent years has been investing in infrastructure to enable steadily increasing output and exports.
The urgency stems from Kazakh oil exports being almost totally dependent on Russian pipelines and export terminals. As the Russian war against Ukraine has placed Russian infrastructure in serious jeopardy, the Kazakh government faces critical decisions.
Its economy is heavily dependent on revenue from oil exports, implying that a prolonged and successful Ukrainian campaign to destroy Russian energy infrastructure could lead to serious domestic upheaval in Kazakhstan. Astana has fresh memories of the troubles in 2022, when civic protests threatened the regime and forced President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev to invoke Article 4 of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) and call on Russia for military assistance to restore order. If that needs to be repeated and thousands of Russian troops arrive, it will have far-reaching geopolitical implications.
Kazakhstan’s vulnerability links back to the early days of independence. When it began developing the supergiant Tengiz oil field on the northern shore of the Caspian Sea, the choice of partners proved fateful. At the time, Azerbaijan was developing its energy resources in partnership with BP and building pipelines for oil and gas through Georgia and onward to Turkiye. Kazakhstan, in contrast, opted for a consortium of Russian and American partners, led by Chevron. Although some favored routing the flow of oil to Azerbaijan, Russian pressure led to a route via southern Russia to Novorossiysk on the Black Sea and to the formation of the Caspian Pipeline Company (CPC). That set the stage for the trouble that is now manifesting.
The CPC has a near-monopoly on Kazakh oil exports; the Russian pipeline (again) is the lifeline of the Kazakh oil industry and therefore, also of the Kazakh economy. The pressing question now is whether Astana can find routes for meaningful oil export volumes that bypass Russia. That is a genuine challenge.
In 2024, Kazakhstan produced 87.7 million tons of crude oil, of which 68.6 million tons were exported. Of that, the CPC pumped 54.9 million tons to Novorossiysk. An additional 8.8 million tons flowed via a pipeline from Atyrau, on the north shore of the Caspian, to Samara in Russia, where it connects to two major pipelines operated by Russian Transneft. One is the Druzhba, which allowed Kazakhstan to pump oil directly to Europe. That line has been damaged, operates intermittently and its usefulness has been severely degraded. The other connects Novorossiysk with an export terminal at Ust-Luga on the Gulf of Finland, offering two alternative routes for seaborne export. Both are under serious threat from Ukrainian attacks.
Astana’s limited options
The only oil delivery routes that do not pass through Russia are a pipeline from Atasu, in Kazakhstan’s Karaganda province, to Alashankou in China’s westernmost province Xinjiang, and tanker transport from the Aktau seaport across the Caspian to Baku in Azerbaijan. In 2024, the former carried 1.2 million tons, and the latter 3.6 million tons, creating supplementary, alternative export routes.
After the 2022 invasion, KazMunayGas moved to sign a contract with the Azerbaijani state energy company SOCAR for a five-year deal to transport 1.5 million tons of crude annually via Azerbaijan. In 2024, the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline carried 1.4 million tons of Kazakh oil to the Mediterranean. Although the long-term ambition to reach volumes of 20 million tons annually is impressive, even that falls far short of Kazakhstan’s transit volumes via Russia. Additionally, Kazakh deliveries via Azerbaijan suffered setbacks in 2025, again forcing Astana to rely on Moscow.
Kazakhstan must now consider the possibility that all Russian export routes may be − if not totally shut down − at the very least severely degraded.
When Ukraine launched its campaign of drone and missile attacks on Russian energy infrastructure, the export terminal at Novorossiysk was a tempting target. But given that the oil flow involved American companies and was the mainstay of Kazakh exports, Ukrainian planners were initially hesitant. That has now changed. In November 2025, CPC infrastructure was attacked, and this year has brought more of the same, including attacks on tankers in the Russian “shadow fleet.” In mid-March, large-scale attacks were also carried out on the export terminals at Primorsk and Ust-Luga, temporarily shutting down all Russian exports of oil via the Baltic Sea.
Kazakhstan must now consider the possibility that all Russian export routes may be − if not totally shut down − at the very least severely degraded. The pivotal question concerns what can be done. And this feeds into the second reason why Kazakhstan is at center stage: The war against Iran has placed renewed emphasis on the long-debated topic of “chokepoints.”
Chinese desire for energy and trade certainty
The Iranian threat against any non-friendly vessels that try to pass through the Strait of Hormuz brought home the risk that global trade flows being interdicted at tight passageways is no longer academic. One country that has looked at these developments with great alarm is China. Aside from being the largest buyer of Iranian oil and getting a third of its oil through the Strait of Hormuz, Beijing has added motivation to look for reliable trade routes.
As its relations with the United States have deteriorated, China has grown concerned about a potential U.S. Navy interdiction of vital trade flows through the Straits of Malacca. The Chinese economy was already in bad shape before the war against Iran, largely due to weak domestic demand and the trade war with the U.S., so the need for Beijing to maintain safe trade routes for exports takes on even greater importance.
One attempted remedy has been to develop the Northern Sea Route along Russia’s Arctic coastline, but Moscow’s war against Ukraine and Kyiv’s response of targeting shipping in Russian waters have made that less attractive. The main implication is that President Xi Jinping faces additional urgency to boost his flagship Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), which has invested heavily in transport infrastructure to link China with markets in Europe. The mainstay of the BRI – the Middle Corridor – traverses Kazakhstan, and so the two countries have ample reason to strengthen their cooperation.
An important consequence of the imposition of sanctions on Russia was that countries in both Central Asia and the South Caucasus scrambled to find transport routes that bypass Russian territory. The result was a massive surge in transport volumes along the Middle Corridor, formally known as the Trans-Caspian International Transport Route (TITR), the roughly 4,000 kilometer-long multimodal trade route linking Western China and Europe.
Read more on Central Asia
- Central Asia finds strength in integration
- Tajikistan tests China’s power in Central Asia
- Kazakhstan bypassing Russia in the Caspian Basin
This is where the Atasu-Alashankou pipeline becomes important. Although it has a design capacity of 20 million tons annually, its practical capacity is often estimated at only slightly more than half that amount. In 2024, it carried about 10 million tons of Russian oil and 1.2 million tons of Kazakh oil. What makes it interesting today is that it forms part of a greater China-Kazakhstan oil pipeline network that also includes two western segments – the Kenkiyak-Kumkol and the Kenkiyak-Atyrau pipelines – linking Atyrau on the Caspian with Alashankou in China.
All are set for planned capacity upgrades. In August 2025, Russia announced it was in talks with Kazakhstan to increase the capacity of the Atasu-Alashankou pipeline by 2.5 million tons to 12.5 million tons. Plans for capacity upgrades of the two segments from Atyrau to Atasu are also in progress. The implication is that a major new route for oil to China may be in the making, reducing Chinese dependence on Gulf oil.
Scenarios
Most likely: Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan progress on BTC capacity increase
The most likely scenario is that Astana places increased emphasis on exporting oil via tankers from the Aktau seaport to Baku, where it is fed into the BTC pipeline.
The problem here is urgency. In 2025, the flow of oil along this route peaked at about 1.5 million tons. The BTC does have spare capacity, and Azerbaijan is not alone in favoring an increased flow of Kazakh oil. The matter was also discussed at a July 2025 meeting in Ankara between President Tokayev and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Yet, even if it does prove possible to reach and possibly exceed the vision of 20 million tons, it will still fall far short of making up for Kazakhstan’s lost export volumes via Russian routes.
There are good reasons why Astana is angered by and strongly condemns Ukrainian attacks on Russian energy infrastructure. Time is short. It may take a few more years to cement its relations with Azerbaijan and Turkiye and make progress toward an alternative route for oil exports. Any serious contraction in the flow of oil via Russia may still upend Kazakh calculations.
Also likely: Kazakhstan deepens cooperation with China
Another likely scenario is that Astana opts to reduce its economic reliance on exports westward and instead doubles down on deliveries to the east. In this scenario, in addition to boosting capacity of the TITR, China also moves decisively to expand the China-Kazakhstan pipeline. Given China’s track record of rapid design and implementation of major pipeline projects, the China-Kazakhstan pipeline could become a viable substitute for the CPC, routing Kazakh oil to China rather than to the Black Sea, thus keeping the Kazakh economy humming. Kazakhstan choosing not to return to reliance on Russia would have lasting secondary geopolitical implications, namely reducing Chinese interest in boosting Russian oil shipments.
Highly unlikely: Kazakh export collapse necessitates alliance with Russia
Ukrainian attacks on Russian export terminals are so successful that Kazakhstan loses 50 percent or more of its oil exports. Short of time to develop other routes, the country would face such economic contraction that it may be thrown into turmoil. The regime could then be tempted to call on a renewed Russian military intervention to restore order, an intervention that would come at a steep price.
In addition to joining Russia in heaping blame on Ukraine and the U.S., Kazakhstan would have to offer concessions ranging from an expanded Kazakh role in sanctions busting to an end of oil exports to Europe via Azerbaijan and increased access for Russian oil via the Atasu-Alashankou pipeline. Although this scenario is highly unlikely, the geopolitical implications would be so substantial that it cannot be ignored.
Contact us today for tailored geopolitical insights and industry-specific advisory services.
Sign up for our newsletter
Receive insights from our experts every week in your inbox.
