Kazakhstan’s Deputy Prime Minister and Trade Minister Serik Zhumangarin said in an interview with Bloomberg on Aug. 16 that Kazakhstan will no longer “blindly follow the sanctions” against Russia if they hurt Kazakhstan’s leading domestic companies. Thus, despite the best efforts of the West, more and more countries are not going along with the attempt to “isolate” Russia. “We will not allow our own producers to be banned from trade,” Zhumangarin said.
Kazakhstan had attempted to skate a fine line between the West and Russia up until now, honoring many Western sanctions while trying to maintain its trade relationship with Russia. But that is now changing. Bloomberg notes what has become a common thread: “But Zhumangarin said that some of the measures intended to choke off Russia’s access to goods have disproportionately hurt Kazakhstan instead. Western governments have meanwhile done little to compensate Kazakhstan, which counted Russia as its largest trade partner until the war.”
The minister said that Kazakhstan will still comply with most of the sanctions because his country “won’t withstand” directly being targeted with sanctions itself. Kazakh companies which had been added to the U.S. Treasury’s list of sanctioned entities for evading the anti-Russian sanctions are now in the process of being shut down, he said. However Kazakhstan has continued its trade with Russia, which still stands at 18% of all of the country’s trade. Over the past two and half years, Kazakhstan has also shifted to working with non-sanctioned banks in Russia, and now settles 88% of its transactions in local currency.
Otherwise, Bloomberg notes that Kazakhstan is further shifting its focus toward China and Iran. In the case of China, that includes the enormous trade routes which flow through Kazakhstan and to Europe, and in the case of Iran, it includes a plan to establish a transport route through the Caspian Sea to Iran for increased trade.
