Russia And Central Asia: Do All Central Asian Roads Still Lead To Russia?

From: Center for Strategic Studies

Given its role as the region’s former coloniser, Russia is quite oftenly characterized as a legacy player in Central Asia. By 1873, Russia completed the conquest of the region and Central Asia remained part of, first Tsarist Russia and afterwards Soviet Union until 1991. This long historical relationship provided Moscow with many leverages of influences in the region such as human relations, cultural and language influence, exictense of influential russian minority, ecocnomic and transportation links etc. that Russia’s other global competitors do not benefit from. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, when other foreign powers also got opportunity to cultivate independent relationship with Central Asian countries, Moscow has been trying to prevent the rise of any other state’s influence in the region. In 1993, Russia adopted new foreign policy doctrine which declared Central Asia as part of Russia’s ‘near-abroad area’ – Moscow’s privilidged zone of interests. 

Russia’s influence in Central Asia encountered certain decline in the beginning of 2000s at the result of the region’s increased engagemet with the US after the start of war in Afghanistan. However resurgence of Russia due to the high energy prices and reconsolidation of Moscow’s power under Putin, starting from 2005 Russian presence started to be more strongly felt in Central Asia. Though currently Moscow does not enjoy the same level influence in comparison with that of 1990s, it is still the power with the strongest tools of influence over the regional countries.

Russian levers of influence in Central Asia

Russia has extensive list of various levers of influnces over Central Asian countries that includes:

1. Human ties with the region – considerable Russian minority in the regional countries, Russian-oriented elites, cultural ties, influence of Russian language etc.,
2. Russia’s influence over the region’s information space through broadcasting Russian TV’s and Russian-language local media
3. Central Asian migrants working in Russia
4. Russian military bases in the region
5. Strong economic cooperation with the Centra Asian countries and Russian investments in strategic projects in the region
6. Attracting the regional countries to the integration unions led by Russia

Considerable Russian minority living in Central Asia and influence of Russian language in the region is important leverage of Russia over the Central Asian region. Currently there are approximately 7 million ethnic Russians living in the regional countries. More than half of Russian minority (4.2 million) lives in Kazakhstan and makes up the 24 percent of population of this country. Ethnic Russians’ share of population in Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and Tajikistan is respectively 12%, 5,5%, 4% and 1,1%. Moreover 16 million people in the region use the Russian language as their main daily communication language which means that over quarter of the population of the region are Russian speakers. Though Russia has never overtly backed nationalistic minority groups or never mobilized them against their governments, it has used these groups as leverage on the regional governments as promoters of Russian interests inside the countries. Moreover, most of the political and security elite of the Central Asian countries are the “Soviet-product” and accordingly have special attitude towards Russia. Using the influence of the language and human ties, Russia possesses strong influence over the information space of the region. Considerable portion of Central Asian people receives information from Russian media sources in the “Russian interpretation”, and consequently Russia has capability to influence the public opinion in the region.

Another lever of Russia over Central Asian countries is labor migrants from those countries working in Russia. Currently more than 3.5 million labor migrants from Central Asia work in Russia which is mainly comprised of Uzbek (2 million), Tajik (1 million) and Kyrgyz (0.5 million) nationals. Remittances sent to their home countries by these migrants is calculated to be about 7-8 billion USD annually. For the smaller countries like Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan remittances sent from Russia is responsible for respectively 46% and 20% of these countries’ overall GDPs. Labor migration from Central Asia to Russia has dual effect for the regional countries: firstly, remittances sent by migrants to their families considerably decreases economic burden on state easing social tension in these countries; secondly, if being expelled from Russia, they will potentially join the rows of unemployed and accordingly opposition-minded population of their own countries which might pose considerable threat to the existing regimes. Therefore, returning back of these numbers of people to their home countries means emergence of a source of serious social tensions. Russia has several times used this tool in negotiations with CA countries, most recently Tajikistan asked Russia to ease conditions for Tajik migrants in Russia as one of the conditions for prolongation of the lease agreement on Russian military base on Tajik territory.

Existence of Russian military force in Central Asia is another lever, as well as the sign of “special relationship” with Russia. Russia has considerable military force in the region including Kant airbase, Torpedo Testing Centre and other military laboratories in Kyrgyzstan, 201th military base in Tajikistan (whose 7,000 soldiers make the base Russia’s largest foreign deployment abroad), Sary Shagan anti-ballistic missile testing rage, Balkhash-9 Radar Station, Kastanay military-transportation airbase in Kazakhstan and some other military objects.

Vital trade routes of the region pass through the Russian territory which also makes regional countries to a certain degree vulnerable to Russia. With Central Asia-Center and Bukhara-Ural gas pipelines, Uzen-Atyrau-Samara and Tengiz-Novorossiysk oil pipelines Russia had almost entirely controlled energy exports from central Asia – the single most important income source for the countries like Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan for about two decades. Kazakhstan also extensively uses Russian territory for exporting oil to Black Sea ports via railway. This monopoly over transportation was only effectively broken with the construction of oil and gas pipelines to China commissioned in 2009 and 2010. However, Russia is still the key partner of the regional countries in the field of transportation of oil and gas to the foreign markets. Moreover, most of the key railways and roads connecting Central Asia to the outside world which were built during Soviet period pass through Russia. With the annual trade volume of 27.3 billion USD (2011) Russia is the region’s top foreign trade partner.

Strengthening multilateralism as Russia’s new means for the long term tying up the region to itself

After Vladimir Putin’s return to presidency in 2012 Russia has activated its policies in the Central Asian region. Observing the activation of Washington in the region on the eve of the withdrawal from Afghanistan, as well as understanding the inevitability of the gradual rising of Chinese influence, Russia tries to utilize its current advantageous position in the region in order to deepen relations with Central Asian countries and tie them up to Russia for the long term period. Russia tries to achieve this goal through signing agreements on realization of big investment projects, writing-off debts of the regional countries, deepening cooperation with them in the military-security field, extending the terms of lease of military bases, and most importantly, attracting them to the membership of integration organizations led by Russia. Russia wants to include whole Central Asia to the so called “Eurasian Union” and sees the Central Asian states’ membership in Customs Union (CU) and Single Economic Space (SES) as the first step of establishing long term Russian supremacy in the region. Kazakhstan is one of Russia’s closest and most important ally’s, and is a participant in the CU (together with Russia and Belorussia) and SES, as well other Russian-led organizations such as Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) and Eurasian Economic Community (EurAsEC). Despite the recent discontent over Baikanur space port, Kazakhstan still remains, along with Belorussia, one of the countries enjoying the most developed relations with Russia. Two other Central Asian countries, namely Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, are officially considering membership at CU but are privately sceptical. They are members of both the CSTO and EurAsEC, and have proclaimed the possibility of joining the CU and SES. Both states are heavily dependent on their bilateral security and economic relations with Russia. Russia’s positions in both countries particularly strengthened after Putin’s visits in the last quarter of 2012. During the visit they signed bilateral agreements with Russia on prolongation of the lease contracts of Russian military bases on their territories, strategic investment and debt write-off accords and other economic and security related agreements. However it is considered that their final joining to CU and SES, if realized, would take several years.

The other two post-Soviet Central Asian countries – Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan have different relationships vis-à-vis Russian-led multilateral frameworks and Russia in general. Uzbekistan has had a turbulent relationship with Russia. Tashkent only joined both the CSTO and EurAsEC in the mid-2000s, after Andijan events when Karimov faced serious criticism by West for bloody crackdown of demonstrations. However, due to disagreements over its role and Russia’s use of these institutional mechanisms, Uzbekistan has suspended its memberships in both – EurAsEC in 2008 and CSTO in 2012. Situation with Turkmenistan is to a certain degree similar – Ashgabat’s stance of “positive neutrality” has successfully detached it from very close collaborative arrangements with Moscow.

Conclusion

Moscow continues to influence and shape many processes in Central Asia according to its own interests and to a certain degree orients their economies. In this part of the post-Soviet space, Russia uses human and economic ties, migrants and minority factors, the long-standing, influence of Russian language, military bases, and most importantly multilateral institutional mechanisms in order to retain its preeminent presence in Central Asia. However, Russia understands the limits of its ability – Russia can be relatively strongest, but not a full-fledged dominant external power in Central Asia. Therefore, in this game Moscow hopes to remain Central Asia’s leading partner, it no longer imagines its presence will be exclusive. Accordingly Russia’s behavior in Central Asia is based on a much more pragmatic approach relating to its immediate economic and security interests.

Moscow is also enough pragmatic to accept that the Central Asian states are willing to exploit the international competition factor in their own national interests and that while accepting Russia as a leading partner, they will definitely invite other powers such as China, the US, Turkey, India, Iran etc. to cooperate in order to balance Russian influence. Thus, while all roads in Central Asia no longer lead to Moscow, Russia’s geopolitical presence in this vast region remains strong and for today Russia is comparatively the most influential foreign actor in Central Asia.