127. ANALYSIS: Luca Anceschi on Central Asia and Russia’s invasion - recalibration of relations with Moscow, role of China in the region & view of the invasion from the region
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Welcome to the War in Ukraine update from Kyiv podcast. I'm Jessica Gnauer, a senior lecturer in international relations at Flinders University in Australia, and I'm talking today with Professor Luka Anczeski. Luka is a professor of Central and East European Studies at the University of Glasgow. Luka focuses in his work on

foreign policy in post-Soviet Central Asia, as well as the geopolitics of Eurasian energy and personalist rulership in Central Asian states. So I look forward to discussing this really important region also in light of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine. So thanks for joining me on the podcast today, Luca. It's my pleasure, Jessica. Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine was

whilst of course the main impacts are for Ukraine itself, has had ripple effects far beyond Russia and Ukraine. One of those places where impacts have been felt are the Central Asian states. So how has Russia's invasion of Ukraine been viewed from the perspective of Central Asian states?

The invasion of Ukraine and Russia's ongoing effort to obliterate the Ukrainian nation and the Ukrainian state, seen from the Central Asia perspective, it is a particularly important episode in a history that goes back 150 or 160 years. So it's not a turning point in the sense that you will see a change, but it's certainly a landmark event.

in the way in which the former Soviet periphery interacted with the metropole. Because the issue of empire is one of the most important concerns. Not the only one, but a very important concern in all of this. And the invasion of Ukraine tested the geopolitical positioning and the international relations of the Central Asian states.

to almost an unprecedented extent. And this is particularly true for the two biggest states, which are Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. Here you have a series of factors which are all contained within the authoritarian framework in which the region's politics have developed. So it's crucial to understand why these are different from Ukraine in that sense.

And to me, the invasion of Ukraine happened at a time in which both Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan in different ways, but also Turkmenistan, are going to a place of authoritarian regeneration because you have regimes that have been in power for a long time and now they have to deal with issues like succession, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan, or term limit removal like Uzbekistan.

And while they're trying to perpetrate the non-democratic rule, they get this pressure from Russia saying, what are you going to do now that we invade the Ukraine?

We saw it last week at the UN, none of them openly condemned the invasion of Ukraine. We really haven't seen any kind of pro-Ukrainian rhetoric coming from Central Asia, but we really haven't heard any pro-Russian sort of expression of support either, which puts them right in the middle. And the position in the middle is not accidental because being sort of neutral,

We deny to avoid circumventing the sanctions. So this kind of equidistance, if you want, actually serves very well the authoritarian leaders who are trying to perpetrate their power. So this is the kind of the perspective on which you add. It's an episode in a continuum. And if I want a larger, a little bit of view,

You must have seen, or maybe your listeners have seen, the video in which there was this Russia-Central Asia meeting at some point last year, in which the Tajik president, Emmanuali Rahmon, went for 11 minutes, you know, addressing Putin about the necessity to change the way in which the relationship ends. And we have a lot of analysts, particularly from North America, who said, well, that's an indicator that

Russia is not in Central Asia. Well, I would disagree with that because at the end of the speech, if you listen to it, Rahmol asked for more money.

which is not a sign that they want to separate their way from Russia. So I think that the invasion, and I'm closing here, has the effect to crystallise a moment in the relationship in which the Central Asian leaders within their authoritarian agenda try to recalibrate the way in which they interact with Moscow. So could you say a little bit more about that recalibration of Russia

Central Asian states with Russia, you know, you noted that there might be a sort of an opportunity here for those states to, in some ways, renegotiate that relationship. What do you mean by that? What are some of the particulars of that recalibration? I mean, this is a periodic issue in Russia-Central Asia relationship. We saw, we've seen this since the 1990s, where the redistribution of the power balance between the Russia-Kazakhstan relationship was

the main issue at stake in the early

version of Eurasianism, fostered by Nazarbayev, the former Kazakhstani president. And we've seen that evolving throughout the 90s to the Yeltsin era and then the Putin, the first Putin and the Tandem, so Putin-Medvedev and then on. So pretty much it is a post-imperial, post-colonial issue. It's how the former periphery, which is not peripheral now, it's just another region, interacts with the former center, which is now just another power.

And I think that there are issues of dependency, issue of capacity, issue of freedom in foreign policy choices. And you hear these issues coming up at times. And of course, this in the last decade has been very more visible because you had Russia reappropriating a lot of the Eurasian integration rhetoric, the establishment of the Union in the mid 2010s, and the creation pretty much Kazakhstan had no choice but join anymore.

That's something that has led to the establishment of this fairly unbalanced power system within economic ties within the Union, led to bilateralize the markets rather than creating a common market like the one they have in the European Union. So that's something which stays in the mind of

of the leaders, I think is very much present in the mind of Uzbek leadership, for instance. So if you had followed the Uzbek foreign policy debate, which is something of a unique case in Central Asia, because these are not kind of stuff that you debate publicly, which was the case then, there was a point in which the state engaged different citizens or people like me to debate whether or not Uzbekistan should have joined the Eurasian Union.

That kind of issue is gone completely with the invasion because they recognized that it was not just a technocratic exercise, something economic, but it became very much about foreign policy alliance and sovereignty independence. Russia is isolated. That's something which no one can argue about.

And the Central Asian perceive that it is a moment of weakness for Russia. And in order to let Russia understand that they will not move, shift field and go into the pro-Ukrainian field, they ask for something else, different treatment, listen to us, try to do what we ask you to do and give us more money. So that's something which I think is a recalibration. So having a more equal relationship. I mean, I'm not sure what Putin thinks about it, but the relation is changing. It has not changed, but is changing slowly, slowly. Yeah.

And Kazakhstan is in quite an interesting position given their long border with Russia. Do you think that this policy of not aligning with Russia's invasion, but also not openly condemning it, is intentional on Kazakhstan's part and I guess other Central Asian states that have followed a similar policy? And what are the drivers of that choice? I would say that's a

I mean, beyond Syria and of course Ukraine, there was a third episode in Russian military adventures overseas in 2022, and that was Kazakhstan. So six weeks before the Ukrainian invasion started, Russian troops under the CSTO umbrella, they went into Kazakhstan and sort of solved the revolution that was happening and reinforced Tokayev's rule. I seem to me that Kazakhstan staying on the fence

of the debate on the war is something that it's payback for that episode. So I think that if we understand the way in which the invasion happened vis-a-vis the domestic policy, which is always the most important factor to understand the foreign policy as well, we then understand why we've had Kazakhstan being relatively neutral and why Uzbekistan again, I mean, the foreign minister was sucked because

At one point, he expressed some vaguely pro-Ukrainian ideas. It was said the day after.

So again, they tried to keep this equidistant because what's at stake is very important. I mean, you have significant, of course, political ties, you have cultural ties, you have economic ties, because Russia maintains a very important position in the ranking of trade investment for Central Asia. But it's also one more dimension, which I think is important, is the fact you have people-to-people ties. People-to-people ties are, of course, Kazakhstan that has a significant Russian influence

minority in place in particular regions not far from the Russian border. Uzbekistan, which on the other hand has got the opposite, has got a very large diaspora of labor migrants living in Moscow and Petersburg, same with Kyrgyzstan. But now you have a third dimension to that. You have

the relocantists or Russian people who, to avoid, in order to avoid the conscription, they went to Central Asia. Some of them moved on, some of them will stay, creating a new wave of Russian settlers in Central Asia. So it seems to me that we need to reassess how the relationship works. It is a time in which this relationship is undergoing significant change, but it's

But it's not the end of the story so far. Yeah. And I wonder whether there is any sort of sentiment there within the Kazakhstan domestic context that there could be a possibility where Russia might try to actually force

forcibly assert their influence within Kazakhstan? Or do you think that that factor of regime type, which you mentioned, that Kazakhstan is obviously governed by an authoritarian regime and not a democracy like in Ukraine, does that factor differentiate it enough that we wouldn't be likely to see the sort of scenario where Russia might actually come in with military force into Kazakhstan? Well, you spot on, Jessica. I think that that's the main difference. That's why I don't think there is a scenario in which

Russia will invade Kazakhstan. It was never likely. It was one of those absurd nationalist calls, which we actually heard

quite frequently to around the 90s, maybe more sporadically from then on. The reason why Kazakhstan is part of Russia's network of authoritarian support and Russia supports the Kazakhstan authoritarianism to the same extent, well, to a bigger extent to which Kazakhstan regimes support Russia by not sort of being entirely pro-Ukrainian. Kazakhstan does not have the geographic position of Ukraine in which Ukraine

integration with EU or NATO are an option. I mean, so I don't really see that that's happened, which leads me to one consideration about the issue of empire. I mean, yes, there is definitely an imperial consideration in the way in which Russia invaded Ukraine and, you know, certainly the way in which has been nationalist agenda that they've been pursuing. But

I think there was much more preoccupation with having a successful pro-Western democratic state very close to Russia that led to the invasion. And you will not see the replication in Central Asia. You will not. Because there is no prospect for democracy in the region, unfortunately. And the international alignment of the state is very much anchored, as it should be, within Asia, so Russia and China. But mostly these are inward-looking states.

These states manage their foreign policy, frame their foreign policy only in order to strengthen their domestic power. They may do so like Kazakhstan through engagement or they may do so like Turkmenistan through isolation, but ultimately the end result of this policy is

And it seemed to me that that's something which is going to keep going for the time being. And do you think that with Russia's invasion, which has brought this weakened position for Russia, do you think that we might see those Central Asian states seeing an opportunity there where they can actually become closer to China and be able to do something like that?

and by virtue of that also distance themselves, if they feel that that's desirable, from Moscow? I wouldn't regard getting closer to China the consequence of getting further away from Russia. I don't think it's a Cold War situation in which it's a zero-sum game. I think they're perfectly able to be close to China, close to Russia or opposite, far away from Russia, far away from China. I think that they have managed...

and we should recognize that there is a very important amount of foreign policy agency to begin to centralization. And that's how they understood the operationalized the great power policy. And in say that,

I don't really think that you're going to see the strengthening of the ties with China, because China does not offer the same panoply of options that Russia does, in terms of political support particularly. I think what you're going to say, you're going to say a redistribution, a recalibration of the way in which these states deal with the Putin regime.

And that was what they wanted in the meeting that I mentioned before with the very long and convoluted Rachman talk. And that's what you hear if you read between the lines of what Tokayev has been saying with emphasis on sovereignty and independence. But I don't think that they're going to sort of detach completely from the Russian Federation because those are not ties that can be unraveled overnight. This is something which a lot of

analysts seem to forget. I mean, we've seen this week that Secretary Blinken went to Central Asia. But that's not the way to offer an option to these states. If you go once every blue moon, you have just a couple of days and you don't offer significant kind of options for them of investment and trade.

and it's all very episodic and very sort of non-substantial, why would they risk their stability to come with you? So it seems to me that obviously Western relationships are not something that are going to be pursued

and very much they will stay, Central Asian states that is, within the sort of Eurasian arena, trying to seek a change in the way in which they interact with Moscow, but also keep dealing with China, because the China relationship is a very complex one, because it's the size matters, and China is big and those states are not. So the instigation of issues like labor shortages and corruption and debt issues

if you believe the death trap narrative, is something which these states have in mind. And I think that there are destabilizing factors even in the way in which they interact with China, and that's something which you will stay into consideration while they operationalize their China relationship. So in general terms, the war has opened some options in the way in which these states, the centralization that is,

interact with Russia, but I don't think will have a big impact on the way in which they interact with China, even though the dynamics that we observe today may actually change in six or seven months. And you mentioned that these states do all have authoritarian regimes. And whilst we're

authoritarian leaders might represent the populations to a certain extent that's going to likely be limited to certain segments of the population. So is there a kind of a disconnect between the way that Russia's invasion is being viewed and the way that relations with Russia are being viewed by political leaders, political elites, and the way that that might be viewed more broadly amongst

populations? I'll respond vis-a-vis Kazakhstan because that's the country which actually have done research particularly on this. And I think that there is a specific anti-Russian component in the discourses of Kazakhstan. And I think it has returned very much

in a lot of the narratives that we heard. These are relatively mainstream positions, if you want. They're not very niche. A lot of people think that Russia is becoming too dangerous. And that's why they like this Tokayev attitude of staying on the fence and not giving up completely to Putin and going to Petersburg and talking about Soviet Union.

So that's something which it seemed as relevant for the way in which the people look at that kind of foreign policy aspect. Obviously, there are limits as to the extent to which the state can sort of respond to this rhetoric for two reasons. The first one, of course, was mentioned before because of the authoritarian support. The second one is the fact that Kazakhstan is a multinational state.

you can't alienate completely the Russian population because it's not doable. So it seems to me that it becomes something that is played at rhetorical level. People are allowed to speak that, but it will stay contained. It will not be operationalised into policy. Well, thanks, Luca. I really appreciate you being on the podcast today and shedding light on these important issues. My pleasure. Thank you. Thanks for listening. And thanks to Gonca Varol for our theme music.