Domestically, the government launched a series of reforms aimed at creating a “New Kazakhstan” and a “listening state”. Yet, over the ensuing three years, these initiatives have fallen short of delivering meaningful democratization or addressing the country’s pressing socio-economic challenges.

Russia’s war against Ukraine has posed a strong challenge to Kazakhstan’s “multi-vector” foreign policy. Between 2022 and 2025, Moscow expanded its influence in Kazakhstan, particularly in the economic and energy sectors, while maintaining a dominant role in security. Potential competitors, including China and Turkey, have so far failed to emerge as viable alternative centers of power, limiting Kazakhstan’s ability to pursue a truly balanced, multi-vector foreign policy.

The year 2022 was an important milestone in the modern history of independent Kazakhstan. A serious internal crisis led to a redistribution of power in the country, while a military conflict unprecedented in scale in the post-Soviet space brought about substantial changes in the country’s foreign policy.

Since gaining independence, Kazakhstan’s foreign policy has been guided by a multi-vector strategy, enabling it to maintain balanced relations with major global actors such as Russia and Western states, and, more recently, with an increasingly active China and Turkey. Over the past decade, as Russia’s posture in the post-Soviet space has grown more assertive and at times coercive, sustaining this balance has become more challenging for Astana, testing its capacity to preserve both strategic flexibility and an independent foreign policy course. By 2015, Kazakhstan was already closely integrated with Russia in core economic and security domains through the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) and the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO)—institutions whose geopolitical relevance in the post-Soviet space increased as the Kremlin reoriented toward an explicitly anti-Western foreign policy. Even so, Kazakhstan maintained a delicate equilibrium in the final years of Nursultan Nazarbayev’s presidency and the early period of Kassym-Jomart Tokayev’s tenure. Despite its participation in Russia-led regional organizations and close bilateral ties, Astana has gradually advanced policies aimed at strengthening the role of the Kazakh language in education, culture and media, as well as pursuing decolonization measures in toponymy and national commemorations—restoring Kazakh names, traditions and holidays in place of their Russian and Soviet counterparts.

Early 2022 delivered a dual shock to Kazakhstan’s domestic and foreign policy. In January, the country experienced mass unrest and an attempted coup d’état that left dozens dead. The following month, its principal economic and security partner, Russia, launched a full-scale war against Ukraine, another post-Soviet state. Together, these events reshaped Kazakhstan’s internal political dynamics and challenged its long-standing multi-vector foreign policy strategy. This report examines the resulting shifts across the political, economic, energy and military domains since the twin shocks of 2022.

Vera Grantseva (Ageeva) holds a master’s degree in philosophy, French language, and international relations, as well as a PhD in international relations from Saint Petersburg State University (Russia). She served as an international relations expert at the Saint Petersburg City Hall from 2008 to 2016, then as an associate professor at the Higher School of Economics (Saint Petersburg) from 2017 to 2023, and as an assistant professor at the Graduate School of Management from 2017 to 2020. Since 2020, she has been teaching at Sciences Po Paris. In 2023, she published her first book, Do the Russians Want the War? (Les Russes veulent-ils la guerre? in French, Éditions du Cerf, Paris).

Rakhimbek Abdrakhmanov is a Kazakh economist and public policy expert. A graduate of the Astana Management Institute in 2008, he also holds a master’s degree in political science from Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv (2022). Since 2025, he has been the Executive Director of the Institute for the Future – Central Asia and a visiting expert at the University of Sussex (United Kingdom). Between 2022 and 2024, he served as Coordinator of International Programs at the Kazakhstan School of Applied Politics. A regular contributor to The Diplomat (Washington, D.C.) since 2022, he is also the author of How Nations Become Brands (Alpina Publisher, 2019).