Kazakhstan: The Next Ukraine?
How a destabilized Russian government, a handful of disillusioned veterans, and China's Belt and Road Initiative could precipitate a confrontation between two former allies
Few a nation in the post-Soviet sphere has had as promising an economic trajectory as has Kazakhstan. Despite the nation’s religiously and ethnically diverse cultural landscape, it maintains remarkable social stability and cohesion—thanks to a form of secularism quite unique to the Islamic world. Kazakhstan also possesses one of the best demographic outlooks anywhere in the world, and its deposits of rare-earth metals and fuel sources have brought the standard of living in the nation close to eclipsing that of Russia.
Yet, for all its exceptional economic and political success, Kazakhstan cannot escape its geographic reality. Like Ukraine, it lies at a peripheral area on the Eurasian landmass; not between Russia and Central Europe, like Ukraine, but rather between Russia and China—two powers whose relative benevolence towards one another has covered up a looming geopolitical crisis in plain sight.
The Sino-Russian partnership is quite simply an “axis of convenience,” operating for the sole purpose of counteracting their shared adversary of the United States. Russia has most certainly pivoted, perhaps irreversibly, from West to East in the past twenty years, and while Beijing and Moscow have a durable circumstantial relationship at the moment, we must consider the long-term durability of this existing arrangement. And, where we might see the best window into the future of this relationship is in the Ukrainian conflict itself.
Russia’s in Deep Trouble:
The military outcome of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is certainly important, but more significant perhaps is the damages to the global order—and to Russia—which have already been inflicted. Recent trends suggest that neither side in the Russo-Ukrainian war will cease fighting unless they are forced to. Yet, in many ways the die have already been cast for the Kremlin. Even if Russian troops were to reach Kyiv, A rather preposterous claim on its own, what would they truly “gain” from their conquest. The Russo-European relationship has been shattered beyond repair, with formerly neutral nations like Finland, Switzerland, and Austria even taking a stand against Moscow. And, with hundreds upon thousands of young Russians dead or wounded, it’s unlikely that a handful of abandoned and leveled-to-the-ground Ukrainian cities will make up for Russia’s worsening demographic crisis. Quite simply, the country is running out of people—but more importantly young people.
Putin’s war economy has seemingly prevented the Russian economy from giving in to Western sanctions. GDP growth has been deceptively high since 2022, as has the general standard of living among Russians. Yet, as history has shown time and time again, this illusion of stability is being propped up by borrowed time, money, and political power. Massive and unsustainable state spending has been allocated to stimulate arms production across Russia, giving employment to communities which have been jobless since the fall of the Soviet Union. Once the Ukrainian War ends, which it most certainly will one way or another, there will be no impetus nor ability to continue such unsustainable state spending. The government will be out of money, and millions will find themselves jobless with nowhere else to turn to for help.
This impending crisis eerily resembles that which gripped the Russian Federation in its early years in the 1990’s. The institutional breakdown of the Soviet Union caused similar levels of unemployment and political instability. Yet, what kept Russia from devolving further into lawlessness was unilateral support from the United States and Western Europe—who were able to infuse enough money, food, and political support into the nation to keep it from turning into Yugoslavia 2.0. Albeit, much of this Western support gave way to long-term problems, but it certainly goes to show that any nation gripped by internal chaos requires external assistance. In 2025, such an offramp simply does not exist, and a China increasingly facing economic problems of its own will not likely be able to fill the vacuum.
While a lack of young Russians is not good for general economic growth, neither are disgruntled young Russians. In fact, recent history has shown us a glimpse into what consequences Russia may have when thousands of wounded, traumatized, and now-unemployed Russian soldiers return to their homes to find a shell of their former prosperity.
When the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan at the tail end of its existence, it suffered about 20,000 dead and another 50,000 wounded—stark numbers to be certain. Throughout the 1990’s, a disproportionate level of Soviet and then Russian social unrest could be attributed to the wounded and disgruntled veterans of this conflict, which quite literally hit the nail in the coffin for Russian Communism.
If Afghanistan precipitated the collapse of the Soviet Empire, then what will the fallout from the Ukrainian War do? Russian casualties in this conflict are estimated to have exceeded 1,000,000, a figure which makes the Afghanistan Quagmire look like a mere peripheral campaign. What will happen to the millions of Russian veterans once they return home? The Kremlin usually turns out to be more durable than people say, but the Russians are not foreign to the idea of revolution.
No wonder Putin is so steadfast in continuing a war of attrition. So long as the war continues, he delays an inevitable crisis that could quite literally bring his regime tumbling downwards.
…And Kazakhstan?
Russia’s precarious situation may seem a mere extraneous matter in Central Asian affairs, but the interdependence between Moscow and its former satellites beyond the Urals suggests a far different reality.
Over 2,000,000 Central Asians, mostly Kazakhs, live in Russia. Their justification for migration was originally higher wages and an elevated standard of living. After all, upon the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the average wages in Kazakhstan (~$1,200) were a tenth of what could be found in Russia (~$12,000). If current trends continue, however, this justification will dissipate. The Russian economy is on the verge of implosion, and per capita earnings in Kazakhstan today ($14,000) are the same as they are in Russia. The former wealth of the Russian superstate has all but ceased, and now—quite ironically—its poorest vassals are now prospering more than even itself.
As Russia destabilizes, the stable nations of Central Asia will likely fall victim to “spillover effect.” Disgruntled Central Asians will return to their native countries, putting an intense strain on local governments, while Russians themselves will likely continue to emigrate to Russian-speaking Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan, two hotspots for Russian dissidents in recent years.
A postwar Russia could likely be defined by the same gang activity, weapons proliferation, and social radicalism that defined the 1990’s—especially from those veterans in Ukraine that have been brainwashed into believing the world is set on Russia’s destruction. We have seen gang violence, paramilitary activity, and domestic terrorism grip Russia both in the 90’s and during the Wagner Insurrection of 2023, so to say that Russia could become the heart of the global illegal weapons trade would not be an absurd statement.
While purely speculative, I believe there’s a case for the convergence of all these factors having several unintended effects for Kazakhstan and its Central Asian neighbors. If a migration crisis grips the nation, in line with current trends, it’s likely that the social breakdown of Russian society will manifest itself in unintended ways on its neighbors.
The Political Concern:
Many of these claims are generalizations which could be applied to any of Russia’s neighbors, yet what makes Kazakhstan’s situation particularly fragile is the country’s massive Russian minority in the north, combined with its peripheral status between the Russian and Chinese spheres of influence.
Not only would a destabilized Russia threaten Kazakh civil stability, but it would also inspire the nation’s Russian minority to result to the same tactics the ethnic Russians of Crimea and the Donbas did in 2014 and onwards. With weapons black markets pervasive and several military-trained yet unemployed Russians looking for somewhere to make use of their mercenary skills, there’s a serious case to be made that ethnic Russians in north Kazakhstan could make their own effort at breaking away from Astana.
It may seem absurd that Russia would endorse such a move against a nation which it enjoys relatively amicable ties with. The same could have been said for Ukraine twenty years ago. Just as the entire Ukraine crisis developed out of an intersect between Russian and NATO) interests in Eastern Europe, so too could Kazakhstan, except with two very different nations.
Here’s Where China Comes In:
In the opening lines of this article, I discussed how China pertains to all of this. And, albeit, I have had to take the long route to finally bring them into the picture. Russia and China clearly enjoy a positive relationship today, but we must not forget that this partnership is not rooted in long-term institutional or ideological affinities, but rather in geopolitical convenience. China’s very own actions in Central Asia, Siberia, and the Middle East clearly show that the Sino-Russian partnership is not rooted in cordiality, but in cold and unwavering opportunism.
The Chinese “Belt-and-Road Initiative” has extended the country’s influence deep into Eurasia. In Kazakhstan in particular, such has most especially been the case. Vast Chinese infrastructure and financing projects have brought the two nation’s economies ever closer, leading some to see Kazakhstan as being more of a Chinese partner than a Russian one.
If we were to operate under the hypothetical assumption that the Sino-Russian relationship would go sour, whether that be over disputes in Siberia or elsewhere, it’s easy to see how Kazakhstan, a nation traditionally in the “Russian sphere” moving ever closer to China, could become a flash point for the confrontation of two Great Powers. If Kazakhstan sought to move closer into the Chinese sphere, could it enact similar anti-Russian language laws as did Ukraine when it sought to move away from Russia in 2014?
There is no accurate answer to this question, but the point is that if tensions were to flare up between China and Russia, Kazakhstan would find itself in the middle of it. And, given the precedent for “protecting Russian speakers” established by the Ukraine War, a general disgruntling of Russian nationalists both in and outside Russia resulting from the Ukrainian conflict, and a greater risk for paramilitary conflict caused by Russia’s inevitable destabilization, it is not entirely out of the picture that Kazakhstan could, in fact, be the next Ukraine.
This is all grounded in extrapolation of existing trends, so it most certainly should not be taken as fact. Yet, if the Collective West seeks to better understand the tenuous balance of power in Eurasia and gain a glimpse into what might follow a post-Ukraine Russia, it might want to look beyond Ukraine for an answer.