Kyrgyzstan says it will cooperate with regional heavyweight Russia despite appeals from some Western countries not to do so.
The comment by President Sadyr Japarov of Kyrgyzstan reflects a broader effort by Central Asian countries to balance longstanding economic and security ties with Moscow alongside relationships with Europe and the United States, which have imposed multiple sanctions packages on Russia since its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
“Certainly, there are Western countries that ask us not to cooperate with Russia,” Japarov said in an interview with the state-run Kabar news agency that was published on Wednesday.
“However, I always openly and sincerely respond to them: ´We cannot refuse to cooperate with Russia. Our trade turnover with Russia exceeds $4 billion. We buy oil, gas, wheat and other foodstuffs from Russia. Geographically, we are in a landlocked area. Our road and rail routes to the world pass through Russia. Russia hosts about a million of our migrants. How can we not cooperate with Russia?”´
Japarov noted that trade between some European Union countries and Russia runs into billions of dollars a year despite sanctions, saying: “When you need it, you cooperate with Russia, but we are not allowed to. This is an unfair demand.”
The EU says it has imposed “massive and unprecedented” sanctions on Russia, including travel bans on individuals, asset freezes on individuals and entities and economic measures that target Russia’s financial, trade, energy, transport, technology and defense areas.
However, exemptions and loopholes mean that some trade continues, for example allowing EU member states that are especially dependent on Russian crude oil to continue receiving it by pipeline. Czechia has spent more than 7 billion euros on Russian oil and gas, over five times what it has provided in aid to Ukraine, according to a report released this week by the Center for the Study of Democracy, a European public policy institute.
Additionally, many analysts have pointed to a surge in European exports to Central Asia and the Caucasus since 2022 as a probable indication that EU and British companies are using the regions as a conduit to send goods to Russia, including at least a portion that are subject to sanctions. The difficulty of tracking products made it hard to confirm any sanctions-dodging, though an analysis of trade data by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development last year concluded that changes in regional trade patterns “may be used to circumvent economic sanctions but on a limited scale.”
At the same time, there have been more reports of banks in Central Asian countries refusing to accept cross-border payments from Russian companies as the United States moved to impose secondary sanctions for doing business with Russian entities. Banks in China, Türkiye and the United Arab Emirates, all big trade partners with Russia, have taken similar action.
Kyrgyzstan is not the only Central Asian country that has expressed frustration about Western sanctions. Last year, Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev said his country would comply with sanctions against Russia while still cooperating with its neighbor. But Serik Zhumangarin, Kazakhstan’s deputy prime minister and trade minister, told the Bloomberg news agency in August that Kazakhstan won’t always “blindly follow the sanctions” and will look out for its own economic interests.
Some Western policy makers understand that Central Asian countries won’t walk away from Russia and China as tensions with the West rise. Analysts at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs, which advises the German government and parliament, said “German and European efforts to win the support of regional states for Western sanctions against Russia must be measured against the realities on the ground.”
