Central Asia is often described as the next frontier in the global race for rare earths. The reality is both more promising and more complicated. Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and their neighbours do hold major reserves of critical raw materials, from uranium and copper to chromium, manganese, tungsten, antimony, graphite and rare earth elements. But much remains uncertain: some deposits are still under exploration, processing capacity is limited, and the most valuable parts of the supply chain remain outside the region.

What is already clear, however, is that governments, state mining companies and foreign investors are moving fast. The European Union has signed critical raw materials partnerships with Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. American investors are looking at tungsten and rare earths. France is active in uranium. Development banks are financing graphite and mining governance. China remains the unavoidable reference point, because it dominates global refining and processing.

For Central Asia, the question is not only what lies underground. It is whether the region can avoid becoming simply another supplier of raw materials for richer industrial powers.

Why these minerals matter

Also read on Novastan: Carbon neutral by 2060? Kazakhstan’s green pledge faces a reality check

The term “critical raw materials” can sound technical, but the products they make possible are familiar. A smartphone contains copper, tungsten, rare earth elements and other metals. An electric vehicle depends on lithium, graphite, copper and sometimes cobalt. Wind turbines require steel, copper and powerful permanent magnets. Satellites, missiles, semiconductors and aircraft all need specialised metals.

Rare earths are only one part of the story. They include elements such as neodymium, praseodymium, dysprosium, cerium, lanthanum and yttrium. Some are used in permanent magnets for electric vehicles, wind turbines, drones, missiles and electronic devices. Others are used in polishing, catalysts, lasers or specialised industrial applications.

But Central Asia’s strategic importance is wider than rare earths. Uranium is essential for nuclear power. Copper is needed for electrical grids, renewable energy infrastructure, electric vehicles and data centres. Graphite is used in battery anodes. Tungsten hardens steel and is used in cutting tools, aerospace and defence. Antimony is used in flame retardants, ammunition, batteries and semiconductors. Chromium and manganese are essential for steel. Titanium is used in aircraft, spacecraft and medical implants. Molybdenum strengthens steel used in pipelines, industry and defence. Gallium is important for semiconductors, radar systems and advanced electronics.

In other words, the issue is not only about “green energy”. It is also about industrial power, military technology, digital infrastructure and geopolitical dependency.

What is actually known

According to the OECD, Central Asia holds a significant share of global reserves of several critical raw materials. The region accounts for around 39% of global manganese ore reserves, 31% of chromium, 20% of lead, 13% of zinc, 9% of titanium, 6% of aluminium, and about 5% each of copper, cobalt and molybdenum.

Kazakhstan is the strongest player. It is already the world’s largest uranium producer and can export many of the materials included in the European Union’s critical raw materials list. Its known strengths include uranium, chromium, manganese, copper, titanium, tungsten, beryllium, gallium and rare earth potential.

Uzbekistan is also increasingly visible. The country has large copper resources, uranium, molybdenum, tungsten, gold-associated metals and rare metals. Its mining sector is dominated by national champions such as Almalyk Mining and Metallurgical Complex, Navoi Mining and Metallurgical Company and Navoiyuran.

Kyrgyzstan has a smaller mining sector, but it is important for antimony, gold and rare earth occurrences. Tajikistan is also relevant for antimony, silver and rare metals. Turkmenistan remains the least transparent case, with public information still much thinner than for the rest of the region.

Kazakhstan’s rare earth moment

The strongest recent rare earth story comes from Kazakhstan. In 2025, the Kazakhstani authorities announced the discovery of the Zhana Kazakhstan deposit, reportedly containing more than 20 million metric tons of rare earth metals. The deposit is said to include neodymium, cerium, lanthanum and yttrium, with an average content of about 700 grams per ton.

The announcement attracted attention because neodymium and related elements are central to permanent magnets used in electric vehicles, wind turbines and defence technologies. But it should be treated with caution. A deposit is not the same as a mine. A mine is not the same as a processing industry. And processing rare earths is technically difficult, expensive and environmentally sensitive.

This is one of the main problems in the global rare earth race. China does not dominate only because it has resources. It dominates because it controls refining, separation and manufacturing capacity. For Central Asia, the real challenge is therefore not only geological. It is industrial.

The companies entering the race

In Kazakhstan, several national and foreign actors are already positioning themselves.

Tau-Ken Samruk, the state mining company, is expected to play a central role in exploration and strategic mineral projects. Kazatomprom remains the key uranium actor, while Eurasian Resources Group is important for aluminium, copper, cobalt and gallium. ERG has announced plans to produce gallium in Kazakhstan, a metal used in semiconductors, radar systems and missile guidance.

American interest is also growing. Cove Capital has been linked to tungsten projects in Kazakhstan, including Northern Katpar and Upper Kairakty, in partnership with Tau-Ken Samruk. Tungsten is strategically important because it is used in hard metals, defence and industrial tools, while Western countries are trying to reduce dependence on China.

Sarytogan Graphite, active in Kazakhstan’s Karaganda region, is another example. Graphite is essential for battery anodes, especially in electric vehicles. The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development acquired a stake in the company in 2024, showing that development banks are also entering the critical minerals field.

In Uzbekistan, the main actors are domestic state companies. Almalyk Mining and Metallurgical Complex is central for copper, molybdenum and other metals. Navoi Mining and Metallurgical Company remains one of the country’s major mining giants. Navoiyuran, the Uzbekistani uranium company, has signed with France’s Orano to develop a new uranium mining venture.

These examples show that the critical minerals race is not only a matter of abstract geopolitics. It is already visible in company strategies, financing decisions and bilateral agreements.

Europe, China, Russia and the United States

For Europe, Central Asia is attractive because it offers potential diversification. The European Union signed a strategic partnership with Kazakhstan in 2022 on sustainable raw materials, batteries and renewable hydrogen value chains. In 2024, it signed a similar memorandum with Uzbekistan. The first EU-Central Asia summit in Samarkand in 2025 also placed critical raw materials within a broader agenda of trade, transport, energy and connectivity.

For the United States, Central Asian minerals are part of a larger attempt to reduce dependence on China in strategic supply chains. Interest in tungsten, rare earths, gallium and other materials fits into this broader competition.

Also read on Novastan: L’héritage de Tabochar : l’extraction d’uranium au Tadjikistan et ses conséquences

China remains the central actor, even when it is not directly mentioned. It is the world’s dominant processor of rare earths and many other critical minerals. Any Western strategy on Central Asian resources is therefore, implicitly or explicitly, about reducing China’s leverage.

Russia still matters through legacy infrastructure, Soviet-era geological knowledge, uranium links and regional influence. But Moscow is no longer the only external actor able to shape Central Asia’s mineral future. This is one reason why the topic is becoming politically sensitive.

The real bottleneck: processing

The most important part of the story is not extraction. It is processing.

A country can have uranium, copper, tungsten or rare earth deposits and still capture only a small part of the value. The highest profits and strategic leverage often come from refining, separation, metallurgy, battery components, magnets and advanced manufacturing.

This is where Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan are trying to change the model. Both countries want more local value creation, not only raw exports. Uzbekistan is promoting mining reform and industrial processing. Kazakhstan is trying to position itself as a partner for value chains rather than just a supplier of ore.

Also read on Novastan: En Ouzbékistan, la percée saoudienne dans le secteur de l’énergie

The risk is obvious. Central Asia has already experienced extractive economic models: cotton, oil, gas, uranium and metals have often generated revenue without creating diversified, high-value economies. Critical minerals could reproduce the same pattern under a greener label.

Environmental and social risks

Critical minerals are often presented as tools of the green transition, but their extraction can be environmentally damaging. Mining requires water, energy, chemicals and waste management. Rare earth processing can be particularly polluting if not properly regulated. In a region already facing water stress, desertification and fragile ecosystems, this matters.

There are also governance questions. Who benefits from new mining projects? How transparent are contracts? Are local communities consulted? Are environmental standards enforced? Do projects create skilled employment, or mainly export raw materials?

Also read on Novastan: En Asie centrale, le marché des véhicules électriques fait ses débuts

For Central Asian governments, the opportunity is real. But so is the danger of a “green resource curse”, where global demand for clean technologies reinforces old patterns of dependency, opacity and environmental damage.

A starter pack for readers

The simplest way to understand the issue is this:

• Rare earths such as neodymium and dysprosium are used in magnets for electric vehicles, wind turbines and defence technologies.
• Uranium is used for nuclear power.
• Copper is used in electrical grids, renewable energy, electric vehicles and data centres.
• Graphite is used in battery anodes.
• Lithium is used in rechargeable batteries, though Central Asia is not yet a major global lithium centre.
• Cobalt is used in batteries and aerospace alloys.
• Tungsten is used in hard metals, cutting tools, aerospace and military equipment.
• Antimony is used in flame retardants, ammunition, batteries and semiconductors.
• Chromium and manganese are used in steelmaking.
• Titanium is used in aircraft, spacecraft and medical implants.
• Molybdenum is used in high-strength steel.
• Gallium is used in semiconductors, radar and advanced electronics.
• Beryllium is used in aerospace, satellites, telecommunications and defence systems.

This is why Central Asia’s mineral base is suddenly being watched so closely. The region is not only sitting on obscure metals. It may hold some of the materials needed for the energy transition, digital technologies and modern defence industries.

More than a mine?

The coming years will show whether Central Asia can turn critical minerals into a development opportunity. The region has the resources. It has growing diplomatic attention. It has national mining companies and foreign investors willing to engage.

But the decisive question is whether Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and their neighbours can move beyond extraction. Without processing, transparency, environmental standards and local value creation, the new critical minerals boom could simply repeat older patterns of dependency.

Also read on Novastan: Le Kazakhstan renforce son emprise sur son uranium face à une demande mondiale croissante

Central Asia is not yet the next rare earth superpower. But it is becoming an important region in the global competition for critical raw materials. For the region itself, the challenge is to ensure that what lies beneath the ground helps build something above it.

Mathieu Lemoine, Editor-in-Chief for Novastan-English

The post What lies beneath Central Asia? Rare earths, critical minerals and the new race for resources appeared first on Novastan English.

Presented as a future major technological and economic hub, the city of Alatau in Kazakhstan is entering a new phase of institutional structuring after obtaining special status, amid persistent uncertainties about its development.

On 27 March, Kazakhstan’s Parliament adopted a law establishing a special legal regime for the city of Alatau, located a few dozen kilometres from Almaty. This status as a “territory of accelerated development”, with specific economic, administrative and legal rules, is intended to attract investment and foster innovation. The decision marks an important step in the evolution of a project that has been presented for several years as a future technological showcase for the country.

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Until recently, however, Alatau remained largely associated with political announcements and ambitious projections, without any real implementation on the ground. The adoption of this special status therefore reflects the Kazakhstani authorities’ desire to structure the project and give it an operational dimension. It remains to be seen whether this institutional advance will make it possible to turn a futuristic vision into a tangible reality.

A project revived by the adoption of a special legal regime

According to the municipality, the city will now benefit from a distinct governance system, with an organisation designed to speed up decision-making and facilitate the establishment of economic actors. The project notably provides for the creation of a strategic authority, the Alatau City Authority, responsible for defining development priorities, as well as an operational body dedicated to the day-to-day management of the project.

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The city will therefore be placed under the supervision of a council chaired by Prime Minister Olzhas Bektenov, in order to ensure direct coordination at the highest level of the state. At the same time, traditional local institutions, such as akimats and maslikhats, will retain their powers in urban management and public social services.

Also read on Novastan : Almaty, une ville en quête de cyclabilité

Beyond governance, this status comes with a specific regulatory framework, including tax incentives, simplified administrative procedures and rules adapted to innovative sectors. This development allows the project to move beyond the announcement stage and enter a concrete institutional framework, marking a new phase in its development.

An economic and regulatory framework designed to attract investment

Launched in the early years of President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev’s mandate in the 2020s, Alatau is intended to become a hub capable of attracting international investment and supporting the country’s economic diversification, notably through its integration into a special economic zone.

The city, which has more than 50,000 inhabitants, is also intended to become a hub for digital technologies, digital assets and innovative financial services. In May 2025, President Tokayev announced the creation of a pilot zone called “CryptoCity” in Alatau, where cryptocurrencies could be legally used to pay for goods and services. This direction is part of a broader strategy aimed at positioning Kazakhstan as an emerging player in high value-added sectors.

Also read on Novastan : Le Kazakhstan envisage l’utilisation de cartes de paiement cryptographiques

Several concrete initiatives illustrate this ambition. As reported by Alatau City, discussions have been held with South Korea under the Economic Innovation Partnership Program, or EIPP, for the development of the city’s infrastructure. In addition, a branch of the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, or KAIST, one of South Korea’s leading technological universities, is set to be established in Alatau, strengthening its academic and scientific positioning.

Financial ambitions are also significant. According to the Kazakh authorities, planned investment in the project could reach 10.4 trillion tenge, or around €20 billion. At the same time, the municipality has announced the upcoming start of construction on a landmark architectural complex called “Iconic Towers”. Work is due to begin in May 2026, with completion expected by 2029, at an estimated cost of $800 million, or around €680 million. These elements reflect a desire to give Alatau an economic, technological and symbolic dimension.

Between stated ambitions and persistent uncertainties

Despite these advances, several factors call for caution regarding the project’s immediate impact. In particular, a lack of clarity remains around the tax and legal rules applicable to Alatau, raising questions about the coherence and effective implementation of the system. These uncertainties reflect the difficulties inherent in creating an entirely new regulatory framework.

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Above all, the situation on the ground remains limited at this stage. In March 2026, Kazakh influencer Alimbek Ulan visited the Alatau site and observed the start of excavation work on the outskirts of the area concerned. However, no major structural progress was visible, confirming that the project remains largely in a preparatory phase.

Also read on Novastan : Au Kazakhstan, la privatisation d’une partie du parc national d’Ile-Alatau fait polémique

This gap between stated ambitions and concrete progress has fuelled criticism from some observers, who point to the risk of Alatau remaining a primarily symbolic project. The year 2026 therefore appears to be a decisive moment: with the announced launch of construction work, the authorities will have to demonstrate their ability to turn announcements into reality and begin a genuine construction phase.

Lenny Cabrol Noto
Author for Novastan

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The post In Kazakhstan, the futuristic city of “Alatau” reaches a new milestone with special status appeared first on Novastan English.

Like many countries, Kazakhstan is facing major environmental problems. Kazakh media outlet The Village has listed the environmental issues most frequently discussed in the country.

Kazakhstan continues to actively address the environmental challenges affecting different regions of the country.

In recent years, the environmental situation in major cities has deteriorated significantly: the basins of many water bodies are gradually drying up, emissions of harmful substances exceed permitted levels several times over, and industrial enterprises are releasing chemicals into the environment in an uncontrolled manner.

Kazakh media outlet The Village has listed the main ecological problems facing the country.

Air pollution

For many years, the East Kazakhstan region remained the country’s largest industrial region. According to the Bureau of National Statistics, more than 15,000 companies are registered there. These include major industrial giants such as Kazzinc, KazMinerals, the Ust-Kamenogorsk Titanium and Magnesium Plant, the Ulba Metallurgical Plant and others.

The mining and metallurgical company Kazzinc, which produces zinc, copper, lead and other precious metals, is the most significant source of pollution. According to the region’s ecology department, in 2021 Kazzinc accounted for almost half of all pollutant emissions in the region.

Read also on Novastan : Au Kazakhstan, les villes industrielles souffrent de la pollution atmosphérique

According to Kazhydromet, in the city of Ust-Kamenogorsk, the region’s administrative centre, unfavourable weather conditions are recorded around 100 days a year. These are days when there is no wind in the region, causing harmful substances to accumulate in the air. During such periods, scientists even advise residents to avoid long walks outdoors, not to open windows, and to prioritise distance learning for schoolchildren.

Today, the East Kazakhstan region tops the national ranking for cancer incidence. The rate in the oblast is 55% higher than the national average: 321 cases per 100,000 inhabitants. Residents themselves say they have been experiencing a sweet, metallic taste in their mouths for years.

Polluted rivers

Senator Olga Bulavkina has highlighted the critical level of air pollution in Ust-Kamenogorsk, noting that hydrogen chloride levels exceed the norm by nine times. She has also linked this pollution to the increase in cancer cases.

Representatives of the prosecutor’s office have stated that, out of the region’s 165 landfills, only 22 comply with environmental requirements — just 13%.

It should be noted that pollution of local water bodies is regularly recorded in the region. In May 2019, residents noticed that the Berezovka River had turned bright green. Following an inspection, scientists found that the water contained 140 times the permitted level of manganese, 44 times the permitted level of zinc, twice the permitted level of ammonium, and five times the permitted levels of sulphate and copper.

Kazzinc was held responsible for uncontrolled discharges and fined 8 million tenge, or €14,640. In July 2023, residents noticed that the water in the Filippovka River had turned milky white. Kazzinc again paid a fine, this time of 50 million tenge, or €91,589.

Modernising industrial facilities to reduce pollution

It is important to note that many rivers in East Kazakhstan are tributaries of the Irtysh. They form part of a single ecosystem. When one body of water is polluted, there is always a risk that harmful substances will enter other channels. The water from these rivers is used not only for drinking water, but also for agriculture and for the operation of thermal power plants and industrial enterprises.

Read also on Novastan : Kazakhstan : une hécatombe de cygnes causée par la pollution

As a result, the Ust-Kamenogorsk metallurgical complex had to modernise its sulphur gas purification units, which should reduce sulphur emissions by 10 to 20%. In Ridder, a new workshop was built, reducing emissions by 714 tonnes in 2024.

On 9 October 2024, it was announced that an environmental air monitoring system was being introduced and that eco-offices would be opened to allow residents to monitor air quality themselves. Work is also under way to improve the emissions monitoring system. This was stated by the akim, or local government representative, of the East Kazakhstan region, Ermek Kosherbayev.

Air pollution in Almaty

In January 2025, Almaty topped the ranking of the world’s most polluted megacities. According to environmentalists from the Almaty Air Initiative, one year of living in the city is equivalent to smoking 487 cigarettes. Annual emissions of pollutants into the atmosphere amount to around 125,000 tonnes.

In addition, according to a survey carried out by the Almaty Air Initiative in August 2024, 42% of respondents believe that air quality in their neighbourhood is poor or very poor. One in six residents is considering moving because of the poor environmental conditions.

Read also on Novastan : La pollution de l’air toujours aussi forte en Asie centrale

In 2024, 202 days of high air pollution were recorded in Almaty. Specialists recommend that residents limit their time outdoors and use protective masks, particularly those who are especially sensitive.

At a meeting of the Public Council, data on the main sources of pollution in Almaty were presented. Motor transport is the city’s main source of air pollution, accounting for around 60% of total emissions. Industrial enterprises also heavily pollute the environment, emitting around 27.5% of all harmful substances. The use of coal heating in private homes also contributes to air pollution, accounting for around 11% of total emissions.

The government is aware of the problem

In November 2022, President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, addressing Almaty residents, raised the issue of air pollution in the city. He noted that the state of the environment has a direct impact on people’s health and lives.

During a meeting with residents of the Zhetysu district, Almaty akim Yerbolat Dossayev explained how the city intends to address environmental problems. According to him, the full modernisation of Combined Heat and Power Plant 2 will be completed in 2026, which should reduce emissions by 90%.

Transport is also being actively developed. By the end of 2026, the city has promised to replace all public transport with environmentally friendly vehicles.

Waste disposal

Waste and rubbish are also among Almaty’s main environmental problems. A large number of illegal dumps have accumulated in the city, and waste recycling remains difficult. During a meeting with residents of the Almaty region in October 2022, Kassym-Jomart Tokayev called for all tourist routes to be equipped with rubbish bins and for waste collection and sorting to be organised. He also instructed the Ministry of Internal Affairs to step up efforts to bring those responsible for illegal dumps to justice.

Plans are being discussed to build a waste recycling plant in the Ile district and another facility in the Karasay district, which would recycle waste and produce electricity from greenhouse gases.

Also read on Novastan : Décharges sauvages au Kazakhstan : d’où viennent-elles, et comment lutter contre ?

As early as 26 February 2022, a rally for clean air was organised in Almaty. Participants called on the authorities to take urgent and comprehensive measures, arguing that the city was on the brink of an ecological disaster. Among the participants were activists, experts, students and families with children.

At the rally, expert Aiymgul Kerimray accused the authorities of manipulating emissions data and called for a transition to European standards for assessing pollution. Activist Asiya Tulesova called on the state not only to listen, but also to act.

The drying up of the Aral Sea

Until 1960, the Aral Sea was the fourth-largest lake in the world. But because of Soviet irrigation projects, the Syr Darya and Amu Darya rivers, which fed the basin, were diverted.

As a result, over the past 60 years, the Aral Sea has shrunk by a factor of three, while its volume has decreased fifteenfold. Its water level has fallen by 29 metres. In the 1980s, the sea split into two parts: the northern Small Aral and the southern Large Aral. This tragedy led to the migration of most of the region’s wildlife, the disappearance of fish, and the emergence of the Aralkum Desert.

Also read on Novastan : Le totalitarisme de l’irrigation a tué la mer d’Aral

In 2023, the akim of the Kyzylorda region, Nurlybek Nalibayev, stated that tens of millions of tonnes of salt and dust are carried by the wind every year from the dried-up bed of the Aral Sea. They travel thousands of kilometres. “The only way to prevent salt from spreading beyond the sea area is to plant saxauls,” a type of Central Asian tree, he said.

According to the akim, 350,000 hectares of saxaul were planted on the dried-up bed of the Aral Sea between 2021 and 2022.

A full restoration of the sea is impossible

However, scientists have expressed doubts about the possibility of fully restoring the Aral Sea. Ecologist Yevgeny Simonov has said that the region’s water deficit is increasing and that it is more realistic to speak of preserving delta water bodies and wetlands than of fully restoring the sea.

Mels Yeleusizov, president of the environmental movement Tabigat, notes that the drying up of the Aral Sea leads to the spread of salty dust, which settles on glaciers and accelerates their melting. He stresses that the disappearance of this body of water has a negative impact on Kazakhstan’s ecosystem, contributing to desertification and the deterioration of the region’s environment.

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At the expense of the state and regional budgets, 101,000 hectares were planted in 2021. In 2022, phytoremediation work was carried out over an area of 250,000 hectares, and in 2023 over an area of 193,200 hectares. From 2024 to 2025, these phytoremediation efforts targeted 556,200 hectares.

Thanks to agreements reached with neighbouring countries, a total of 1.6 billion cubic metres of water had been sent to the northern part of the Aral Sea by the end of March 2025. In April of the same year, the total volume of water in the northern Aral Sea stood at 22.1 billion cubic metres, 3.2 billion cubic metres more than at the beginning of 2022.

Daniyar Beisembayev and Sultan Temirkhan
Journalists for The Village

Translated from Russian by Sophie Combaret and from French by Mathieu Lemoine

Proofread by Elise Medina (French version)

The post Overview of environmental issues in Kazakhstan appeared first on Novastan English.

Last month, Kazakhstan hosted the 40th Conference of Directors General of Railways, bringing together representatives from more than thirty countries. It was an opportunity for Astana to showcase its ambitions for the “Middle Corridor”, against the backdrop of the war in Ukraine and the reshaping of global trade routes.

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From Monday 20 April to Monday 24 April 2026, the 40th Conference of Directors General of Railways brought together more than thirty countries in the heart of the Kazakh capital, against a backdrop of geopolitical uncertainty. The Organisation for Co-operation between Railways, known as the OSJD, is an intergovernmental organization that brings together a network of more than 320,000 kilometres of railway tracks, carrying around 5.5 billion passengers and nearly 5 billion tonnes of freight each year.

Founded in 1956, the OSJD – the main forum for railway coordination between Europe and Asia and a legacy of technical cooperation from the Soviet era – has gradually expanded to include new members. It currently has 27 members, ranging from Albania to Vietnam.

This year, the 40th Conference of Directors General of Railways brought together more than 300 officials and representatives of railway companies. Kazakhstan’s Prime Minister, Olzhas Bektenov, spoke in person, a sign of the political importance attached to the event.

He recalled that “Kazakhstan’s railway sector, which plays a crucial role in economic development, aims to improve the population’s quality of life and ensure sustainable growth”. The Prime Minister also announced strong ambitions for the coming years, declaring that he wanted to “build an additional 5,000 kilometres of railway tracks” over the next four years and to “increase transit volumes to 100 million tonnes per year by 2035”, thereby underlining his desire to strengthen Kazakhstan’s pivotal role in trade between Europe and China.

An Afghan delegation representing the Islamic Emirate met Kazakh and Azerbaijani officials to discuss the strengthening of the Hairatan and Torghundi ports and regional transit, according to the Afghan news agency Pajhwok Afghan News. This presence, like the joint presence of Ukraine and Russia, shows that railway cooperation can sometimes go beyond conventional diplomatic logic.

In addition to financial management issues, the conference also focused on the OSJD’s future work programme and the organization of the next meeting. Emphasis was placed on increasing volumes, modernizing infrastructure and transitioning towards more advanced technologies to improve the efficiency and fluidity of rail transport, reports the media outlet Transport Corridors.

The Middle Corridor at the heart of global challenges

By speaking of “transforming Eurasia into a single, fully functioning transport mechanism”, the Kazakh Prime Minister is directly referring to the trade route that has been developing in the region for around twenty years, particularly since China’s Belt and Road Initiative in 2013.

The Middle Corridor, also known as the Trans-Caspian International Transport Route (TITR), is a 4,000-kilometre multimodal transport corridor linking Chinese factories to European markets via Central Asia, the Caspian Sea, the South Caucasus and Turkey.

It is also the shortest overland route between China and Europe, provided the necessary infrastructure is in place, which was long not the case. Delivery times, which once took several weeks, have now fallen to around 18 days, according to The Astana Times.

Read also on Novastan : L’Asie centrale face au défi de la réalisation du corridor médian

This reduction was made possible in part by digital transformation and the introduction of the TezCustoms system, which has reduced processing time at the borders with China from 8 hours to 30 minutes.

Mr Bektenov emphasized Kazakhstan’s pivotal role, with around 85% of Middle Corridor traffic passing through the country. He also announced the construction of 5,000 kilometres of new railway lines over the next four years, with the aim of reaching a transit capacity of 100 million tonnes per year by 2035.

A route that has grown rapidly since the geopolitical crises…

This Eurasian route has been one of the main beneficiaries of the global geopolitical situation of the past four years, with two successive shocks having propelled its importance.

The first is the war in Ukraine since 2022: Western sanctions imposed on Russia caused westbound freight volumes on Russian routes to fall by 51% in 2023, according to Transport Corridors. The Middle Corridor has thus established itself as the only practical land bridge between China and Europe that bypasses Russian territory.

Read also on Novastan : Le corridor sud, une menace pour le transport kazakh ?

The second is the war in the Middle East and the Houthi attacks in the Red Sea, which began in late 2023. According to the Qatari media outlet Gulf Times, amid uncertainty in the region, some companies redirected their traffic from the Strait of Hormuz and the Suez Canal towards the Cape of Good Hope, making land-based alternatives all the more attractive.

In 2024, the volume of goods transiting along the Eurasian route increased by more than 63% year-on-year, according to the US think tank Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, reaching 4.1 million tonnes compared with only 500,000 tonnes before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. On the China-Europe segment alone, the number of containers transported increased twenty-fivefold between 2023 and 2024, according to the journal CEBRI.

…but remains constrained

However, according to an article by Friedrich Conradi published on the Carnegie Politika website, despite its potential to become a major competitive route, it could prove limited by structural problems. “The Middle Corridor is still far from competitive. It handles only around 6% of the annual capacity of the Northern Corridor via Russia, which stands at 100 million tonnes, and while many Western actors expect it to continue growing, several indicators instead suggest a slowdown,” the researcher explains.

The Middle Corridor’s infrastructure remains insufficient, with ports often saturated, particularly in Georgia, and an inherently fragmented route, since it relies on a succession of transport modes, making it slower, more expensive and less seamless than alternative routes via Russia or by sea.

Added to this is persistent geopolitical instability in the Caucasus and around Iran, as well as environmental challenges, particularly the falling level of the Caspian Sea, which directly affects port capacity and the continuity of maritime transport.

Lorenz Uberti
Contributor for Novastan

Edited by Elise Medina (French version) and Mathieu Lemoine (English version)

Thank you for reading this article! If you have time, we would appreciate your feedback, either through this anonymous form or by email at editorial@novastan.org. Thank you very much!

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Renowned for the quality of its grapes, Uzbekistan nevertheless saw its vineyards massively destroyed after the fall of the USSR, as part of measures aimed at limiting alcohol consumption. It took years of work for the Akhunov family to rebuild a wine collection that is now unique in Central Asia.

A report on the still-emerging renaissance of Uzbekistan’s wine industry.

A few turns of the key are enough. And already, through the half-open door, they begin to appear: touches of purplish colour diluted among the foliage. The oldest of these vines come from cuttings dating back nearly 80 years. Planted side by side, they rise towards the sky until they almost block it out. Over time, they have woven their web, forming a green setting around the precious bunches of grapes.

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With a determined step, 30-year-old Kamila Akhunova enters this green space, located just a few steps from the family property. The Akhunovs own a 21-hectare estate in the town of Qibray, Uzbekistan, about 20 kilometres from the capital, Tashkent. On this remote land, nearly 15 hectares are devoted to grape production. Their company, UzumFermer, produces 100,000 litres of wine per year.

Hidden from view, a veritable treasure cave of grape varieties is revealed. Here, grapes of every shape and kind grow side by side. Among them is a unique treasure: a Japanese grape variety called “Ruby Roman”, sold for nearly 10,000 dollars per bunch. A little further on, Kamila Akhunova presents another variety: “Jupiter”. “It is also a treasure because only five countries in the world have it. And on our continent, we are the only ones to have it.”

A unique collection in Central Asia

This unique sample of vine plants was “collected all over Uzbekistan, and is the only one that exists in the country,” Kamila Akhunova insists. “We went to former laboratories and old gardens to recover all these grapes.” It was a painstaking quest to build up this collection, after many years spent travelling across Uzbek soil. Today, she proudly looks over the 125 different vine varieties: “100 are for table grapes and 25 for standard wine.”

Behind this initiative is her father, Rachid Akhunov. Now 57, after studying physics in Russia and leaving behind laboratories and pipettes, this vine and grape enthusiast decided to dedicate himself to rebuilding this heritage. “For me, it was a real quest. During my travels, I began collecting all kinds of grapes,” he says proudly. “My father,” Kamila Akhunova stresses, “received the gold medal from the Uzbek president, Shavkat Mirziyoyev, in 2016, as thanks for the revival of vine cultivation. We do not make wine with them; we simply present our collection to tourists.”

Although their quest to rebuild this collection is now complete in Uzbekistan, Kamila would like it to continue abroad. “We are waiting for the law to change so that we can import other varieties from all over the world, from France, Germany, Chile, Africa, Australia, New Zealand…” the young woman explains. In Uzbekistan, many regulations drastically limit the import of vines — plants and cuttings — by subjecting them to very strict health controls.

A family business

Kamila Akhunova’s passion for wine dates back to her teenage years. In 2015, at the age of 20, she decided to leave for Spain, to Barcelona, drawn by its crowded summer beaches and, above all, by the vineyards of the surrounding region. These are spread out less than an hour from the city centre, on hillsides. There, she immersed herself in the study of oenology at the Sant Ignasi Faculty of Tourism and Hotel Management, part of Ramon Llull University.

“It was a very enriching experience for me. I discovered a profession that really interested me.” Her mother’s dream was for her to settle permanently abroad. “She wanted me to marry a foreigner and open my own business in another country.” But with her diploma in hand, and feeling nostalgic, she eventually returned to Uzbekistan. Back on her home soil, the young woman had only one goal in mind: to continue this adventure around wine.

It was around this time that her parents decided to look for land away from Tashkent. After travelling around the region, they settled on a wasteland a few kilometres from the Uzbek capital. “We found this place and rented it. Because in Uzbekistan, you cannot buy land; you lease it from the government, for a lease that can run from 15 to 55 years,” she explains. “There was nothing here at the time. No trees, no vines… It was abandoned land,” Kamila Akhunova recalls. The family’s objective was to build their holiday home here, their “dacha”, to rest away from the Uzbek capital.

It was her mother who first decided to plant vines. “As a landscape designer, she loves nature. At first, when she began planting them, it was just for the family. We also exported a little grape to Russia, but just for pleasure.” The year 2019 marked a turning point, when a new law allowed them to expand their land to 21 hectares, Kamila explains. Shortly afterwards, another law stipulated that “if you have a vineyard, regardless of the type of vine, you have the right to make wine.” No licence or documents were needed.

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It was an opportunity the Akhunov family seized. Kamila Akhunova’s father then planted more vines on the property, this time to produce wine and sell it. At first, “it was not professional wine, but rather homemade wine, table wine. It was ‘Rizamat’, made from a local grape. We also had ‘Jupiter’” – a wine made from a seedless muscat-type grape variety popular in domestic vineyards. Building on this momentum, the family business continued to develop, launching event organization and tastings for tourists alongside the vineyards.

A climate suited to vines

Then, very quickly, the Akhunov family decided to professionalize its activity. In 2020, they invested in highly sophisticated equipment from Italy. To train on these new machines, they brought in an expert for six months. “We found a professional oenologist in New Zealand, the director of a large vineyard there, who had a lot of experience in the field. She was Ukrainian, so she spoke Russian. It was perfect for us. She came here and lived with us. She was our teacher: she taught us everything.” After she left, other specialists, including some from France, took over to share their experience. It was also that year that Kamila’s family decided to create its own company.

If they chose to invest in vines, it is because in this Central Asian country, the climate is favourable to grape production. With more than 200 days of sunshine per year, Uzbek wines are distinguished by the intensity of their flavour. “It is very hot in summer and very cold in winter, but our temperatures are not too low. It is therefore an ideal climate for vines. Grapes like heat,” Kamila Akhunova says.

Cabernet Sauvignon, Jupiter, Pinot Noir, Bayanshiri, Riesling… Their production remains diverse. As for their vines, they are spread over two plots of land. One is near their property, the other in Parkent, a town about 30 kilometres from Tashkent. There, the vines cling to the mountainside. “What is very different in Parkent is the soil: the earth is black and rich, with many minerals. There is also a difference in temperature: it reaches a maximum of 28 degrees in summer, whereas here, in the plain, it gets very hot in summer.”

“Reviving the culture of the vine”

In this Muslim-majority country, viticulture nevertheless occupies an important place. Currently the leading wine producer in Central Asia, its earliest traces date back to Antiquity. “Uzbekistan is one of the countries that has preserved an indigenous grape variety — a vine variety originating from a specific region, where it has adapted over the centuries. Vines have been present there for a very long time. This dates back to the sixth century BC. There is therefore a long history between this country and wine. One could say it is a true heritage,” explains Benoist Simmat, a specialist in the history and economy of wine and author of the book The Incredible History of Wine.

Yet through the vicissitudes of history, this tradition experienced turbulent periods. In the nineteenth century, at the beginning of the Tsarist period, viticulture developed at an industrial level in the country. Dmitry Filatov, a Russian merchant, founded the country’s first winery in Samarkand in 1868, and trade developed around it. Factories multiplied, but this upturn was slowed by the advent of the Soviet Union.

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Measures were then taken to combat alcohol consumption among the population. In the late 1980s, Mikhail Gorbachev, then General Secretary of the Communist Party of the USSR, launched an awareness campaign. This was accompanied by the destruction of many vineyards across the Soviet republics, including in Uzbekistan. It was not until the fall of the communist bloc and the country’s independence in 1991 that they began to be revived. “They were replanted after the country’s independence. The objective was to revive the culture of the vine,” Kamila Akhunova explains.

Yet the economic isolation promoted by former president Islam Karimov placed another brake on wine production. In 2016, the arrival in power of Shavkat Mirziyoyev marked a turning point, triggering the modernization of viticulture. He introduced measures encouraging the growth of this culture, such as increasing vineyard areas, rational land use and the promotion of wine tourism.

However, the import of vine plants remains restricted in the country. “They are afraid of phylloxera. It is an insect that eats vines, especially their roots,” Kamila Akhunova explains. “And because it would also attack cotton, which is one of our main crops, the import of vine plants is very limited. During the Soviet Union, it was completely prohibited.”

The first wine festival in Uzbekistan

Alongside wine production, the Akhunov family wanted to diversify. Tastings, cellar visits and estate tours… Many events are organized throughout the year on the property. “We do all kinds of events: weddings, conferences, photo shoots, Uzbek film shoots. Sometimes even Uzbek stars come here!” Kamila Akhunova exclaims. Navruz, Halloween, Victory Day, Christmas… major holidays are also celebrated on the estate.

The family is also behind the Tashkent Wine Festival. It has now been held every year on their land for six years. “We were the first to create this kind of festival in Uzbekistan. At first, we only had 200 people,” the young woman says proudly. Last September, they gathered nearly 1,000 people on the lawns of their property. Crowded among the vines and bunches of grapes were politicians, doctors, business leaders and ordinary tourists, each strolling around with a glass of wine in hand.

Among this year’s participants, Irina, a psychologist working in the capital, came specifically to discover the vineyard and enjoy the tasting. “It is a very good way to discover the different wines they produce here,” she explains. “I did not know that wine was produced in Uzbekistan. Some friends told me to come. It is a good discovery.” A little further away, a group of Russians working in Tashkent sing songs while tasting the precious beverage. What they appreciate is “the slightly sweet taste”. Their preference is for “Jupiter”.

“For us, this festival is a huge showcase for our products,” Kamila stresses. Over the years, the Akhunovs have managed to develop partnerships with companies, but also with the embassies present in the capital, such as the French embassy in Tashkent. “We were present at the 14 July ceremony. We also had people taste our wine during the Independence Day celebration at the American embassy.”

A “micro-market” seeking expansion

Today, the objective of the young woman and her family is to continue “developing wine culture in Uzbekistan and its export”. “We focus on quality, not quantity,” she explains. “We produce 200,000 bottles per year; that is not much. We do not want to increase production, because we want to control it. The large factories in Uzbekistan produce much more, but the quality is not exceptional. They sell bottles for 85 euro cents for export to China or Russia, whereas our prices range from 12 to 50 euros.”

Read also on Novastan : Au Kazakhstan, découverte des vignes des routes de la soie

“Wine exports and production in Uzbekistan remain fairly low. There are micro-markets: a local micro-market, a Russian micro-market which also includes the countries of Central Asia, and a tourism micro-market. Does that make it a market in its own right? Currently, no. Especially since globally, there is overproduction, particularly of red wine,” says specialist Benoist Simmat.

Yet year after year, wine production continues to increase in the country. In January 2024, Uzbekistan’s large wine companies produced 708,400 litres of grape wine — an increase of 26.4% compared with the same period in 2023, according to official figures from the National Statistics Committee.

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For now, the Akhunov family has only a few partnerships with Uzbek restaurants in Russia, Kazakhstan and Malaysia. “It is not a large quantity in terms of exports. They just buy a few boxes for their restaurants,” Kamila Akhunova explains. As for France, their bottles are displayed at the wine museum in Bordeaux, where a special section is dedicated to Uzbekistan. They are currently in discussions to supply an Uzbek restaurant in Lyon and would like to develop partnerships with Uzbek restaurants in Paris.

In this desire for international recognition, reforms aim to position Uzbekistan as a major player in the international wine market. Initiated in August 2023, one of them aims to establish a system of agro-industrial wine clusters. At the same time, the state has committed to strengthening financial support in this sector.

“Our objective is to take our country to a higher level in terms of production and export,” Kamila emphasizes. “Now that our quest to rebuild a collection of grape varieties in Uzbekistan is complete, this is our new mission.”

Louise Simondet,
Correspondent in Uzbekistan for Novastan

Translated by Mathieu Lemoine

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The post In Uzbekistan, one family wants to support the revival of wine production appeared first on Novastan English.

Relations between Kazakhstan and China are deepening fast. As a linchpin in Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative, Astana hopes to pluck the fruits of this global infrastructure development strategy, which aims to boost overland trade connections between East and West. However, China’s treatment of ethnic Kazakhs in the Xinjiang province, the region’s second-largest Turkic community after the Uyghurs, remains a sensitive subject that is complicating further rapprochement between the two countries.

This text was originally published on 20 October 2025 by our partner media outlet Lossi 36.

On a cold winter’s day in February 1997, thousands of demonstrators took to the streets of the city of Yining, known to locals as Ghulja, in China’s Xinjiang province to protest against growing ethnic discrimination and religious repression. As the demonstration grew in strength, people started chanting “God is great!” and “Independence for Xinjiang!”. Chinese security forces soon mobilised and cracked down on the crowd, killing dozens and arresting hundreds. The exact casualty figures of the massacre remain unknown. The 1997 Ghulja incident is now looked upon as a precursor to the brutality against the predominantly Muslim population in China’s westernmost region.

Nearly three decades later, tensions are still palpable in Yining. Travelling through the city, there is a distinct presence of CCTV cameras and police patrols on the streets. Important intersections in the downtown area are overseen by well-equipped Chinese soldiers next to armoured vehicles with mounted machine guns. They appear suspicious of people taking pictures of the local street life and seem uncomfortable with foreigners freely roaming about a region where, according to most observers, China is perpetrating grave crimes against humanity. Several countries have also accused Beijing of committing genocide, though some human rights groups contend that there is insufficient evidence to support this qualification.

One of the targeted communities are the Xinjiang Kazakhs, the region’s second-largest ethnic minority after the Uyghurs. Because of their mostly Turkic-Muslim background, the Chinese authorities see them as a threat to the state ideal of creating a homogeneous nation, united under the red banner of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). In accordance with a policy of “preventative repression”, Beijing has sought to dilute the province’s demographic makeup through the state-sponsored in-migration of Han Chinese and has invested heavily in surveillance technology and infrastructure while building an enormous network of so-called re-education camps. 

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A short history of repression

After the takeover of Xinjiang by the CCP in the waning days of the Chinese Civil War in 1949, the position of the Kazakhs in the region steadily grew worse. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, Mao Zedong implemented his Great Leap Forward, which caused tens of thousands of local Uyghurs and Kazakhs to defect to Soviet Central Asia. 

The exodus coincided with a gradual deterioration of relations between Moscow and Beijing. The Soviets launched a propaganda offensive against China, promoting the migration of minority groups while trying to destabilise Chinese authority over Xinjiang by appealing to separatist movements. The local Soviet consulate enabled the emigration of ethnic minorities by issuing passports. 

When Beijing found out, they stopped distributing exit visas, which sparked fears among local Kazakhs and other minorities of being cut off from their kin in the USSR. A resulting demonstration was brutally put down, encouraging thousands of others to flee as well. Eventually, in 1962, the Sino-Soviet border was closed after between 60 and 100 thousand had left, and remained so for most of the Cold War.

Read more on Novastan: 70 years of Xinjiang: Beijing celebrates and enacts new political doctrine

Isolated from the outside world, the economic situation in Xinjiang worsened, while elsewhere the “Chinese economic miracle” was just gaining steam. Uneven regional development, combined with interethnic tensions due to the continued inflow of Han Chinese settlers, eventually resulted in a wave of separatist terrorism in the 1990s and 2000s, followed by a ruthless clampdown on the region by Chinese authorities. This eventually culminated in the ongoing Strike Hard Campaign against Violent Terrorism, which started in 2014.

Atajurt Eriktileri (Homeland Volunteers), a Kazakhstan-based human rights organisation in the forefront of advocating for the release of ethnic kin in Xinjiang, has documented thousands of cases of ethnic Kazakhs who have been incarcerated in China without a trial. Although the number of imprisoned Kazakhs is much smaller than the several hundred thousand Uyghurs currently detained in prison camps, Atajurt has done most to highlight the plight of all ethnic minorities in Xinjiang.

Yet, as China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) brings a surge of investment into Kazakhstan, deepening ties between the two countries place Astana in a delicate position amid domestic concerns over the repression of the Xinjiang Kazakhs.

Crossroads Khorgos

About a hundred kilometres by road to the northwest of Yining, on the Chinese side of the Sino-Kazakh border, lies Khorgos. This newly planned town with a skyline that, from a distance, rivals that of any major European city, is part of a recently created special economic zone. It includes a massive area full of highways, warehouses, manufacturing sites, residential areas for workers and their families, and a duty-free shopping zone.

Khorgos is key to Beijing’s BRI. This multi-billion infrastructure development strategy, colloquially known as the New Silk Road, aims to expand China’s economic and political influence around the globe by boosting trade connections between East and West. Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, as well as heightened instability in the wider Middle East, the route passing through Khorgos – the shortest overland transport route to Europe – has rapidly grown in importance. 

That strategic relevance is also visible on the Kazakh side of the border. Here, Khorgos transforms from a geopolitical pivot into a logistical hub. The importance of Khorgos lies in the fact that the Chinese operate with a different track gauge, so any rail transport making its way to Europe has to change trains here. This happens just inside Kazakhstan, on a vast asphalted harbour-like complex, surrounded by barbed wire fence and dense with brightly-coloured shipping containers, towering cranes, and a warren of railway tracks. 

This infrastructure, together with additional roads and railways for onward transport, has been financed with Chinese loans. Critics of the BRI have voiced concerns about what they call “debt-trap diplomacy”. This alleged strategy, however, has been repeatedly disproven by experts. In the case of Kazakhstan, Nargiza Muratalieva, associate professor at the American University of Central Asia, states that “[s]trong institutions, public understanding, a diversified loan portfolio, and sustainable projects” allow Kazakhstan to effectively manage its debt.

That is not to say there are no risks to deepening economic ties with China. China is facing considerable economic challenges, as it struggles with deflation and an ageing population. These internal problems could easily spillover into BRI countries. Should Kazakhstan continue to take on BRI-related investments in the long term, infrastructure projects like Khorgos might become a liability. 

Views on China

China has come to recognise growing unease over its expanding economic footprint in Kazakhstan. Beijing has responded by promoting soft power initiatives, especially through boosting educational and cultural exchanges and increasing the production of Kazakh language content through Chinese media outlets. These efforts are aimed at moving beyond the elite-level political and economic ties China previously depended upon.

So far, this strategy has not been very successful. Apart from economic concerns, the (mis)treatment of ethnic kin in Xinjiang continues to influence public opinion on China in Kazakhstan. Over the past few years, several demonstrations have been organised to protest against China’s Xinjiang policy.

Meanwhile, Kazakhstan’s government under President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev has been mostly silent on this issue. Although the resettlement of several thousand ethnic kin from China has given the impression that Astana is trying to address the situation with Beijing, the country’s political leadership carefully avoids direct criticism. Tragic but true, the pursuit of economic interests undercuts any meaningful response to human rights abuses on the other side of the border. 

Read more on Novastan: China in Central Asia: Fact-checking and myth-busting

The awarded reportage Kazakhstan-Xinjiang, the Border of Tears describes how many Kazakh survivors, upon their return to Kazakhstan, face indifference with regard to their experiences in China: “All the violence they have endured is not recognised, and seems to exist only in their private lives: denied by the Kazakh authorities, generally ignored by civil society, invisible to the medical community.”

In recent years, Astana has tried to actively thwart activists and grassroots organisations concerned with the suffering of Xinjiang Kazakhs. Most notably, in 2019, Atajurt Eriktileri’s founder and frontman Serikzhan Bilash was charged for inciting inter-ethnic hatred and arrested. When he was released after seven months of detention, he was forced to leave Kazakhstan. Attempts by his organisation to enter national politics were obstructed by the authorities, and little has been heard about these efforts. 

The BRI paradox

To pre-empt domestic unrest linked to China’s Xinjiang policy, Kazakhstan’s government is committed to making the BRI work. The latest Central Asia Barometer shows a correlation between the current boom in trade between China and Kazakhstan and more favourable views on China, especially among the youth. This finding reveals a striking paradox. Kazakhstan’s growing economic dependence on China could be softening Sinophobic sentiment – even as the BRI facilitates the repression of Muslims in Xinjiang, a cause that has provoked outrage among Kazakhs. 

In China, BRI projects have gone hand-in-hand with a sharpening of security measures. The new highway connecting Khorgos with Yining, for example, is strewn with police checkpoints, and at airports and train stations throughout Xinjiang security controls are strict and time-consuming. The Chinese government has long perceived the expression of minority identity as an obstacle to regional development and worked to pacify separatist resistance.

Scholars have argued that the economic benefits of BRI-related infrastructure development befall disproportionately upon the non-local Han Chinese population, while the ethnic minorities of Xinjiang have played a significant role in the workforce behind BRI projects — possibly under conditions that amount to forced labour. If true, these findings would suggest that the promise of the BRI would sooner increase than diminish regional inequalities. 

Ultimately, managing the fine line between fostering economic development and addressing human rights issues leaves Kazakhstan in a tricky situation. The ongoing struggles of ethnic Kazakhs in China highlight the significant tensions that form a major obstacle for further rapprochement between Kazakhstan and China.

Julian Postulart for Lossi 36

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The post The story of the Xinjiang Kazakhs: silent suffering along the Belt and Road appeared first on Novastan English.

As Kazakhstan officially starts the construction of its new nuclear plant, the region is overwhelmed with an extreme heat wave. The climate change is especially noticeable in the continental climate: in the land where summer temperature peak at 49 degrees Celcius is even the slightest upgrade dangerous. But the efforts to become climate neutral country prove to meet some complications. 

The temperatures in Kazakhstan – as anywhere in the world – are rising. The winter of 2024/2025 has been classified as ‘anomalously’ warm, as temperatures exceeded the norm by 2 to 6 degrees. Spring and summer have been way too hot as well: monthly reports show temperature records. Over the last 75 years, the average yearly temperature in Kazakhstan has risen by 6 degrees.

The efforts to counteract climate change, or at least to slow it down, are extremely relevant in this context. But the current starting point makes the green future look rather distant.

Fuel dependence in the background 

In 2023, Kazakhstan’s president Kassym-Jomart Tokayev signed the ambitious Strategy of the Republic of Kazakhstan on Achieving Carbon Neutrality by 2060. Nevertheless, in a country where the economy is deeply reliant on the fossil fuel industry, the shift toward renewable energy poses considerable difficulties.

Since Kazakhstan’s independence (now well over three decades ago), subsequent governments were betting on the extraction of fuel for continued economic growth, as well as securing investments through selling the exploration and recovery rights to fossil giants like British Petroleum, Exxon and Shell. Petroleum currently makes up 52,5% of Kazakhstan’s export, which earns the country up to 34,8 billion GBP annually. Whilst Russia is subjected to sanctions as a result of its war against Ukraine, western countries are looking for alternative suppliers. And Kazakhstan has proven to be an interesting partner in that regard – a fact reflected in the signing of new contracts, primarily for oil exports to Europe.

The fossil fuel industry remains far too profitable to scale back, let alone to significantly reduce oil production. Yet such a decline seems inevitable: if not driven by environmental imperatives, then by sheer necessity. Current forecasts suggest that known oil reserves could be exhausted within just 30 years at present production rates. While this projection may align with broader climate objectives, governments continue to pursue new exploration efforts in regions considered geologically promising.

The main problem: coal

Oil is only part of the problem. The energy sector in general is Kazakhstan’s number one source of greenhouse gas emissions. Although energy demand from industry accounts for just over a fifth of final energy consumption, more than a third is spent on the building sector. This is where coal processing comes in.

Kazakhstan possesses vast coal reserves, though extraction remains costly. The country’s largest deposits are relatively shallow but consist of exceptionally thick seams, making mining operations less efficient. In 2023, a tonne of coal could be purchased directly from mines for around 9,000 tenge – approximately £15.75 at the prevailing exchange rate – well below global market prices. For domestic consumers, transportation costs can nearly double that price, yet coal remains the most affordable source of energy production. However, its widespread use is responsible for more than half of Kazakhstan’s greenhouse gas emissions.

Most of Kazakhstan’s coal is consumed domestically, primarily to supply the country’s thermal power plants. Coal accounts for 99% of heat generation and more than half of total electricity production. However, many of these power stations are outdated and, in some cases, in disrepair. Most were built during the Soviet era and have long exceeded their intended operational lifespan.

Read more on Novastan: Kazakhstan stops investment agreement with ArcelorMittal after deadly explosion in Kostenko mine takes 46 lives

The government does not seem particularly willing to completely abandon coal. News outlet zakon.kz cites Kazakhstan’s Minister of Energy Yerlan Akkenzhenov: ‘We live on wealth. Coal-fired power generation is considered the cheapest option. In addition, the construction of combined heat and power plants also allows us to control the heat supply. As you know, all our cities are supplied by combined heat and power plants and a central heat supply. We must continue to pursue this approach […]’

As an alternative, the minister has proposed equipping the power plants with modern boilers that enable coal to be burned ‘without residue’. By 2035, ‘every combined heat and power plant will be gradually converted exactly to clean coal technology’.

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In a country with very cold winters, less than half of households are connected to a central heating network. In single-family detached homes, coal is frequently used as the main energy source for heating, which in turn contributes to the already high levels of smog produced by thermal power plants in big cities like Almaty. Taking into consideration the state of Kazakhstan’s housing stock, a considerable amount of energy gets wasted due to insufficient insulation or outdated heating systems. Ironically, even with the energy wasted, heating is still cheaper in the long term than investing in renovations.

Read more on Novastan: Breathing space: air quality and energy transition in Kazakhstan

Slow decarbonization in transport

A similar situation can be observed in the transport sector, the country’s second-largest energy consumer. The UN, in its roadmap for achieving the 7th sustainable development goal (‘Ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all’), recommends that Kazakhstan decarbonize 15% of its passenger cars by 2050. Currently there are 6.17 million cars registered in the country, of which electric cars account for only 0.003%.

A quarter of a century is a long time – after all, 25 years ago, electric cars as we know them today did not even exist. However, the timeframe proposed by the UN seems optimistic for Kazakhstan: almost half of the cars in the country are at least 20 years old, and a significant proportion of these are cars would no longer pass vehicle safety tests, or would be banned from towns and cities for not meeting environmental standards. Although the government is planning to impose fines on car owners whose vehicles exceed emission standards, there are no plans to use the revenue to directly fund environmental initiatives. Many drivers only replace their cars when they are no longer roadworthy, and even then, they tend to turn to secondary and tertiary markets when looking for a replacement.

Switching to an electric car is not easy in Kazakhstan: all charging stations are located within the three largest cities – Astana, Almaty and Shymkent – and even there, their availability is limited. Due to the risk of fire, for example, it is prohibited to install charging stations in apartment parking areas. Electric car owners are hence dependent on public charging stations in large car parks and near shopping centres – which often do not supply green electricity.

According to internal research of a car manufacturer in the region, more than half of car owners do not consider electric cars as a purchase option when thinking about their next buy. After the boom in 2022/2023, when cheap electric cars were imported en masse from China, excitement has subsided. The urban population with above-average incomes who wanted and could afford an electric car, have already purchased it; for the rest these cars are just too expensive, far too impractical, far too unfamiliar. Car dealers are now focusing on hybrid models instead, which could serve as a transitional solution. Yet even these are no option for the majority of the population, given the current state of infrastructure in Kazakhstan.

Clean energy: only a fraction in the market

It is not that Kazakhstan produces no clean energy at all.

Hydroelectric power plants, however, play only a minor role in the country’s energy mix — for understandable reasons. Most of them were built in the same era as the aging thermal power plants. Moreover, water resources are steadily dwindling, raising doubts about whether there will be enough water to sustain hydroelectric production in the coming years.

Read more on Novastan: Kazakhstan: Residents suffer from lack of water

Despite Kazakhstan’s favorable geographic conditions, solar and wind energy remain surprisingly underused. As of 2024, the country operated just 59 wind farms and 46 solar parks — a modest number given its vast, sparsely populated steppes that are ideally suited for renewable energy generation. The southern regions enjoy between 2,200 and 3,000 hours of sunshine per year — two to three times more than the United Kingdom. Kazakhstan also has excellent wind potential: average wind speeds of 5–6 m/s are common across most of the country, reaching up to 8.27 m/s in certain areas. Experts estimate Kazakhstan’s total wind energy potential at around 920 billion kWh per year.

Yet, this immense potential remains largely untapped. The main reason is economic. At current price levels, the clean energy sector is unattractive to private investors. Equipment must be imported at high cost, while the electricity produced can be sold for no more than seven pence per kilowatt hour, VAT included. For most households, retail prices are roughly half that. As a result, revenues barely cover maintenance, and the payback period for new projects is so long that, by the time investors see a return, much of the infrastructure is already outdated and in need of further investment.

It has long been evident that energy prices in Kazakhstan will have to rise to finance sector modernization and accelerate the shift toward green energy. The controversial new nuclear power plant will not be profitable otherwise: experts estimate that the price of nuclear power will be 12.5 pence per kilowatt hour in the first 15 years. Ultimately, however, it is sustainable energy that must take the lead. Sergei Agafonov, chairman of the Kazakh Association of Energy Suppliers, envisions an optimal energy mix in which renewables provide at least half of the demand, while nuclear power accounts for roughly the global average – projected to reach 12% by 2040. ‘Yes, renewable energies will have to dominate our energy balance over all other types of energy generation. The main thing is that we carry out this change carefully [..]’, said Agafonov in an interview with Orda.kz.

New turning point

The strategy for achieving carbon neutrality in 2060 contains neither an implementation plan, nor success indicators, nor any sanctions for failing to achieve the set targets. In 2017, it was already announced at the EXPO in Astana that the share of renewables should increase to 30% by 2030. As things stand, the quota is only 6.2%. This still shows a 4% increase over the last seven years, but the growth estimate was clearly far too optimistic. Just four years after the EXPO, the target value has been halved.

A scenario in which Kazakhstan fails to meet its 2060 targets remains entirely plausible. The Climate Action Tracker has voiced similar concerns, rating the country’s climate policies as ‘insufficient,’ noting that ‘emissions will continue to rise until at least 2035 under current policies.‘ The lack of genuine political will to tackle the issue is perhaps best illustrated by President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev’s abrupt change of stance. Speaking at a forum of the National Council for Science and Technology on September 26, Tokayev underscored the continued importance of coal and made a striking remark about climate change:

‘frankly, everything that is happening looks like a large-scale fraud.’

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For over a year now, the billion-dollar fraud case surrounding former tech CEO Sam Bankman-Fried has been causing an uproar. In Kazakhstan, too, the case caused a stir – mostly because of the Bankman-Fried’s connections to local businessmen. The Kazakh government is planning to regulate the industry more strictly: from January 2024, new guidelines on trading in digital assets will apply.

Steep rises can be followed by equally dramatic falls, especially in the world of cryptocurrencies. The industry experienced such a fall in November 2022 when FTX, the world’s second-largest trading platform for such assets, collapsed within a few days, taking several billion US dollars of investments with it. At the beginning of November 2023, the American federal court in Manhattan found Bankman-Fried guilty of embezzling the assets invested by customers of its crypto exchange FTX.

The sudden collapse was caused by revelations of dishonest business practices by the company’s management, above all by the CEO and co-founder Sam Bankman-Fried, who was once hailed as a child prodigy. At his behest, the hedge fund Alameda Research, a sister company closely linked to FTX, which he also co-founded and managed, had invested more than one billion US dollars from FTX investments in Kazakhstan. In turn, this contributed to the financial imbalance of the company network.

The scandal also made waves in Kazakhstan, where Alameda Research and other companies have fueled a veritable crypto boom in recent years. In response, the government is planning to regulate the promotion of and trade in cryptocurrencies more strictly.

Bitcoin rush in Kazakhstan

For FTX, Bankman-Fried requires enormous “mines” – industrial electricity and server farms the size of factory halls. The best conditions for building such mines were found in Kazakhstan at the end of the 2010s, where cheap electricity and relaxed regulations attracted many such projects. In 2021, Kazakhstan was the second largest Bitcoin producer in the world, with up to seven per cent of national energy production flowing into data centres at the peak of the Bitcoin frenzy. This is also where Bankman-Fried made his momentous investment. He had Alameda Research invest in Genesis Digital Assets (GDA), a company that is registered in Cyprus but operates primarily in Kazakhstan.

This Kazakh connection was reconstructed by the online portal Kursiv.media. GDA was founded in 2017 by the Kazakh investors Rashit Mahat, who worked on the board of directors of the telecommunications company Kcell between 2019 and 2021, and his business partners Abdumalik Mirahmedov and Andrei Kim. They joined forces with two German crypto specialists, Marco Krohn and Marco Streng, to get the company up and running.

Bankman-Fried joined the board of GDA in 2021. The money from Alameda flowed into a total of three data centres operated by GDA in Kazakhstan, where computer halls powered by cheap electricity generated coins that were later to be traded on Bankman-Fried’s exchange FTX. At least, that was the plan. By the beginning of 2022, Alameda had invested 1.1 billion USD in GDA – by far the hedge fund’s largest investment.

The beginning of the end for FTX

However, when the crypto market collapsed worldwide at the beginning of 2022, the value of the mining companies also fell massively. A venture that had seemed lucrative enough to risk more than a billion dollars just a few months previously now looked far less attractive. When the industry service CoinDesk also reported in November 2022 that Alameda Research’s core capital consisted of FTT, FTX’s platform-owned cryptocurrency, the situation worsened.

The almost uncontrolled growth of the industry in Kazakhstan was coming to an end at this point anyway. After the mass protests in January 2022, which in part were fueled by high energy prices, cheap energy for Bitcoin mining was no longer an option. In July 2022, a tax on electricity for mining projects was imposed.

The aim is to gradually regulate the industry and integrate it with state actors such as the Astana International Finance Centre (AIFC), a prestige project of the Kazakh government. In line with the external image of the AIFC, the country continues to see itself as a promising location for the digital industry. Yet, in the future, crypto start-ups will need to comply with certain framework conditions. The laissez-faire attitude that once attracted Bankman-Fried to Kazakhstan seems to be over for good.

Moving the mines

The regulatory efforts from 2022 were, at least in part, fueled by the sudden collapse of FTX. Following the CoinDesk report, the FTX and Alameda Research financial construction was exposed and confidence in the actual liquidity of Bankman-Fried’s company evaporated in one fell swoop. As a result, the industry leader and FTX’s biggest competitor, Binance, dumped its FTTs, causing the currency’s value to plummet – and Alameda Research and FTX with it.

GDA has relocated its data centres from Kazakhstan to the USA, where the company intends to continue its operations. New projects in North America and Sweden are now advertised on the company’s website, and former board member Bankman-Fried has completely disappeared from the company’s public image.

President Tokayev, who had even met with Bankman-Fried and other entrepreneurs in the industry at the end of 2021, finally issued the most far-reaching package of measures to date on crypto mining in Kazakhstan on 6 February 2023. According to kursiv.kz, these will come into force in January 2024.

New regulations, new investors

From now on, mines will require a state license to operate and will only be allowed to purchase electricity from the Kazakh grid if there is a surplus of electricity. From 2024, at least 50 per cent of the coins produced in Kazakhstan must also be traded via platforms registered with the Astana International Finance Centre. This quota is to rise to 75 per cent by 2025. The AIFC is not only intended to provide an attractive marketplace for the finance and tech industry but is also working on closer integration of the cryptocurrency sector with state authorities, as reported by the Astana Times.

Although the initial gold rush mood in the country is over, it will not be the last we hear of cryptocurrencies in Kazakhstan. Binance, the major competitor of the collapsed FTX, continues to work closely with the Kazakh government and is optimistic about the country. The company is already as well connected as GDA once was. In October 2022, Zhaslan Madiyev, until then Vice Minister for Digital Development, moved into a management position at Binance Kazakhstan.

Binance was founded in China, but currently has no official headquarters. The company is now working on crypto products that are linked to existing national currencies. The CBDC Digital Tenge, a crypto counterpart to Kazakhstan’s national currency, was run as a pilot project until December 2022 and is being prepared for a broader market launch. The new currency should be available nationwide by 2025.

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The situation of queer people in Kyrgyzstan has worsened in recent years. Repressive laws and negative portrayals in the media are putting the community under increasing pressure. At the same time, there are still niches in which queer life can flourish.

The more homophobic and hostile towards queer people a society is, the more important it is to have safe spaces where LGBTQ people can be themselves. The only gay bar in Kyrgyzstan is one of these safe spaces. You won’t find it on Google, only insiders know where the “G.” bar is located. For eight years now, the bar in Bishkek, which is actually more of a night club, has been offering a safe space not only for members of the queer community, but also for women regardless of their sexual orientation. The large dance floor and cheap drinks are popular with young people, with up to 600 guests coming at the weekend, says Zhenya, the owner of the bar. It’s quieter during the week, but the bar is open every day, because you can always use a safe space: “People want to go somewhere. Not everywhere it is safe to show your affection to your partner or flirt with someone. So, they come to us.”

The bar is named after the G-spot: “A place where it feels good, but it’s not easy to find,” says Zhenya with a laugh. The fact that the address of “G.” is not publicly known and there is no sign on the door has to do with security. In spite of security measures, stones have been thrown at the bar, a neighbour has attacked guests and passers-by have called the police when they realised they had stumbled upon a gay bar. “The police have been causing us stress since day one,” says Zhenya, but the bar has not been seriously threatened.

In addition to “G.”, there are other safe spaces, such as the community centres of the LGBTQ organizations Kyrgyz Indigo and Labrys, where various events take place, from English-speaking clubs and craft workshops to information evenings on health issues. And safe spaces don’t have to be physical spaces, they can also be found on the Internet, for example the online medium “QueerQyz”. The activists Artur and Akbermet produce funny and informative videos in which queer people talk about their lives. “We have only a few media with queer representation in Central Asia. We think it’s important to show that there are many queer people in Kyrgyzstan,” says Artur. QueerQyz is a medium by queer people for queer people. Its aim is not to explain things to hetero-cis people, but to give queer people the opportunity to find themselves represented, to realise that others have similar experiences to their own.

Rejection and violence: homophobia in society

In Kyrgyzstan, many queer people keep their identity a secret in order to protect themselves from violence and discrimination. Filming and taking pictures are therefore prohibited in the “G.” bar. This is because outings – the involuntary disclosure of a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity – can have serious consequences; from rejection by one’s own family and bullying by colleagues and classmates to job loss and physical violence.

“My family doesn’t accept me. I live with my girlfriend’s family. They accept us as a couple. Our freedom ends at her house. We can’t be a couple anywhere else. Not at work, not among friends.” This is how a study by the NGO Labrys quotes a lesbian woman from the Chui oblast. Another woman expresses a similar view: “I’m really tired of hiding. My girlfriend and I have been together for seven years. We’re only together in our bedroom. In all other places, we’re not together. On the street, we’re not together. We can’t go out together.”

Visibly queer people report being harassed on the street with inappropriate questions, such as why they paint their nails or look like a girl. In conservative families, there are often attempts to “cure” queer family members by means of psychiatrists or religious authorities.

Read more on Novastan: LGBTQIA Muslims – “An online imam with background music is hardly the absolute truth”

But there are also parents who accept and support their children. There even is a parents’ group that meets regularly in Bishkek and talks about their experiences as parents of queer children. In general, the situation for queer people in Bishkek is much better than in the regions. In the capital, there is better access to information and support, there are safe spaces and it is more likely to meet open and non-homophobic people than in villages. In more rural regions and smaller towns there are hardly any opportunities to come together as a community. “We don’t communicate with each other, it’s dangerous. Of course, we want to communicate, but the risk of being outed is too high, so we hide in small groups,” says a participant in the Labrys study who lives in Osh.

If a person’s sexual orientation becomes known, there is a high risk that they will experience violence, threats, and blackmail. A study by the organization ECOM documents several cases in which members of the state authorities lured queer people to fake dates and then extorted money from them by threatening to out the person in front of their family.

Most of the time, LGBTQ people who experience violence and discrimination do not press charges as they cannot expect any help from the authorities. At police stations, they are mocked and threatened, if not the police officers themselves were the attackers in the first place.

Exclusion from public life: the marginalization of trans people

Alongside HIV-positive people, trans people are among the most marginalised members of the Kyrgyz LGBTQ community. The risk of experiencing violence is particularly high for them, and ridicule and rejection are everyday experiences. In addition, there is no access to high-quality hormone preparations in Kyrgyzstan and as most trans women are involved in sex work, the working hours of the few available endocrinologists don’t fit their schedule. This means that many trans women do not have access to tests and examinations. Since a change in the law in 2020, it is also no longer possible to change the gender marker in official documents.

Situations in which ID must be presented are particularly tricky for trans people. Often, problems arise when the person’s appearance is not recognised as matching the stated gender. Many trans people therefore avoid going to the doctor, reporting criminal offences or even opening a bank account, as Anelya, coordinator of the MyrzAiym initiative, which supports trans people in Kyrgyzstan, reports. Anelya talks about her own experience with doctors: “Three or four years ago, I ended up in hospital. I had to have emergency surgery. The doctor who was supposed to operate on me came to me, saw me, saw my papers and said: I don’t operate on people like that.” It was only with great difficulty that a former colleague who had accompanied Anelya to the hospital was able to find a young doctor who was willing to perform the operation. Trans people cannot rely on receiving medical care. That is why many resort to self-medication.

There are also hardly any opportunities for trans people to pursue a regular job or gain access to higher education. In a study by the organisation Kyrgyz Indigo, a trans woman says: “I wanted to go to medical school, but because of my gender marker they don’t allow me to study. I applied to study in 2021, but was not accepted.”

Public life remains closed to many trans people and fear is a daily experience. Another study quotes a trans woman from Bishkek: “I’m afraid to open my mouth in the street. Because there’s a man’s voice. I stand there like a mute. Because if I speak, it’s clear I’m trans. What would happen then, you can imagine. That’s why I always keep quiet in the street. It is especially frustrating when people come up to ask me something, I want to help, but I leave like a frozen person, because I am afraid that they will realise that I am trans.”

This makes safe spaces for trans people and mutual support within the community all the more important. Anelya has therefore set up a WhatsApp group where people can get in touch if they need help. The MyrzAiym initiative also regularly offers leisure activities such as volleyball or swimming in a safe environment to enable trans people to pursue hobbies that they cannot do in public, for example because they cannot show themselves in a swimming costume or in the changing room at the sports club.

The battle for “traditional values”: queer people as scapegoats

While the acceptance of queer people in Kyrgyz society has never been particularly high, their situation has deteriorated further since the beginning of Sadyr Zhaparov’s presidency in 2020. Zhaparov, who is in the process of transforming the country into an authoritarian state through numerous legislative changes, is pushing the narrative of Kyrgyzstan’s “traditional values” and placing questions of morality and national identity at the centre of his campaigns. Similar to state propaganda in Russia, in recent years the Kyrgyz mainstream media has frequently referred to a corrosive Western influence. Homosexuality is said to be a Western “import” that is destabilizing the country and its values.

During the 2020 election campaign, a secretly recorded video showing two men having sex was circulated on social media to discredit an opposition party. “These Kyrgyz people were not affiliated with a political party at all, but hoping for a homophobic reaction, Kyrgyz political technologists used their lives to promote someone else’s political interests,” reports the independent medium Kloop. However, such critical reports in the Kyrgyz media are rare. After monitoring the media between October 2022 and June 2023, the NGO Kyrgyz Indigo came to the following conclusion: “We analysed more than 200 stories that highlighted the queer community. Almost 80 per cent of the news items were stories that said that the existence of LGBT+ people leads to the destruction of national identity, morality and family values.” In the news items, NGOs that receive funding from abroad were also discredited. Many articles argued that they served Western interests and worked towards weakening traditional Kyrgyz values.

Queer tradition: a counter-narrative

LGBTQ activists are striving to counter the claims that homosexuality and queerness are at odds with Kyrgyz identity and tradition by showing that queerness has always been part of Kyrgyz history and can also be found in folklore and traditions. For example, the name of the medium QueerQyz refers to the historical name of Kyrgyzstan, which is composed from the words “kyrk” (forty) and “qyz” (girl). “There is a legend that tells that our nation was created by 40 girls, which is a little bit queer,” says Akbermet, one of the founders of QueerQyz.

However, such attempts to associate tradition and folklore with queerness provoke particularly negative reactions from conservative citizens. Akbermet talks about illustrations she created for QueerQyz’s Instagram page: “I drew our yurt with a rainbow coming from it and two girls that are kissing who are wearing our national clothes, which of course, caused a lot of hate.” There were many hate comments under the post, reproducing the propaganda narrative spread by the government and mainstream media. “Please don’t use national themes. Our people are not so depraved when it comes to this [homosexuality]. It’s fine in Europe, but it’s not welcome in our country,” reads one of the comments, with many others sounding very similar.

“LGBT propaganda” and “foreign agents”: Laws based on the Russian model

It is clear that the anti-queer propaganda is falling on fertile ground with many citizens. The government is also using the anti-queer sentiment to introduce restrictive laws. Since August 2023, it has been illegal to disseminate material among minors that denies traditional and family values and advocates “non-traditional sexual relationships”. The law is very similar to the Russian law of 2013, which also banned so-called “homosexual propaganda” among minors (recently this law has been replaced by a more restrictive one that bans all queer content in Russia). However, the Kyrgyz law is less clearly formulated than the Russian one, so that it is not clear in which cases the law is broken and in which not. In Russia it was for example possible to distribute queer content with “18+” warning labels. It is unclear whether such warning labels are enough to protect against prosecution in Kyrgyzstan. Such vaguely formulated laws are a license for repression, as they can be interpreted by the authorities and courts at will.

Queer organizations and media are dealing with the new law in different ways. Some are barely posting on social media anymore and are no longer organizing events, while others are continuing to invite people to events and publish information – albeit with “18+” warnings.

Read more on Novastan: Uzbekistan – pro-LGBTQ blogger victim of violent attack

For NGOs working for the rights of LGBTQ people, it is also generally unclear whether and how they can continue their work. In October, a draft law was passed in first reading by the parliament that is very similar to the Russian law on “foreign agents” and is aimed at NGOs that receive funding from abroad. LGBTQ organizations could not exist in Kyrgyzstan without money from abroad. If the text is signed into law, the affected NGOs will have to register as “foreign agents” and be subject to strict controls. Also, a new article is to be added to the penal code. It states that if someone founds or co-operates with an NGO that “violates the personality or rights of citizens”, they could face up to ten years in prison. What exactly it means to violate the “personality or rights of citizens” is not defined. So, the law can be used against unwelcome activists, who are already frequently exposed to the risk of attacks and outings.

The restrictive laws and anti-queer narratives in the pro-government media also mean that homophobic citizens feel confirmed in their resentment and see themselves as being on the right side when they attack queer people. “People feel safe that they can harm queer people. They just do it because they know the government won’t protect us,” says Akbermet, who herself was threatened and outed in front of her family.”

“Dark times”: defending the status quo

One activist from the organization Labrys speaks of “dark times” in light of these developments. There is a prevailing feeling of uncertainty in the queer community, as they don’t know what will happen next, what they can and cannot get away with. This lack of clarity is gruelling, says “G.”-Bar operator Zhenya: “As far as the draft laws are concerned, are we feeling their effects? Not yet. But it is very likely that we will feel them. I don’t know if it will affect us at all. But all the time we live in fear, what will be affected?” The medium QueerQyz has made their content invisible on Instagram until it is clear how exactly the law works.

Activist Meena (pseudonym) from Kyrgyz Indigo adds: “We are all very exhausted. We can’t even imagine, what is awaiting us and we can’t even guess, what can happen. We just move like we used to, try to live our normal life. But in the background, we understand that it’s not how it used to be. We don’t know how to act in the new realities. So, it stresses us out.”

Many activists seem to agree that it is not the time to be loud and fight for more visibility, but to protect the community and defend what has already been achieved. “I think right now what we have to do is to keep safe. Our goal is to keep what has already been done, because a lot of work has been done. I personally think that it’s not the time for growth. Maybe just to protect,” says Meena, but then adds: “But historically crises are the best time for breakthrough.”

Hope and resilience: carrying on despite an uncertain future

The queer community in Kyrgyzstan has achieved a lot in recent years. They have actively advocated for their rights and organised successful campaigns that have increased awareness of anti-discrimination issues. Safe spaces and active networks have been created, and queer people can find medical, legal and psychological help in several NGOs. LGBTQ artists and activists have successfully appropriated and reinterpreted symbols and narratives that many conservative, queer-hostile and nationalist citizens claim as their own.

Time and again, the community has proven its strength and resilience under adverse circumstances and demonstrated its determination to defend what it has achieved and carry on despite everything. And so, despite the difficult situation, queer life in Kyrgyzstan continues: at the end of October, a big queer Halloween party was celebrated in the centre of Bishkek with a drag show and vogueing on stage, and in November, the Fem Museum initiative opened a large exhibition of queer art.

All of this is still possible. Whether it will stay that way and what the future holds in Kyrgyzstan is uncertain. There are few reasons for optimism, but the community seems determined to continue to make use of the freedom that is still available and to fight to ensure that the situation does not deteriorate any further. “In a situation like this, it’s very difficult not to lose hope,” says Artur from QueerQyz. “But I always have hope.”

Written by Norma Schneider

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On the evening of Saturday October 28^th, a fire broke out in the Kostenko mine at a depth of 700 metres, followed by an explosion of a methane-air mixture. 201 of 252 miners on shift were able to exit on their own, 24 of whom had injuries and needed medical help. The rescue operation continued till Tuesday, October 31^st, when the last body was discovered. All 46 of the missing miners have been found dead.

Notorious employer

Kostenko mine, along with 7 other coal mines in Kazakhstan, belongs to ArcelorMittal Temirtau, a company notorious for its security negligence. Apart from mines it also has Central Asia’s largest metallurgical plant, a mining and processing plant, four iron ore enterprises, two heat and power plants, a pipe plant and several auxiliary enterprises in its portfolio, that were obtained with huge preferences during the privatisation campaign of the mid-1990s. Many of them had issues with safety and fatal accidents in the past.

The current mine explosion is the deadliest in recent history for Kazakhstan, but it is not the first. Since 2006, more than 150 people have lost their lives working for companies belonging to AMT JSC. In 2022 alone there have been six deadly occurrences in various companies and mines belonging to ArcelorMittal Temirtau – which resulted in 13 deaths. The most recent tragedy occurred in August 2023, when 5 workers died at the Kazakhstanskaya mine when conveyor belt caught fire. The governmental commission determined a “100% fault of the employer.”

In the company’s latest statement from October 29, 2023, following the last explosion in the Kostenko mine, ArcelorMittal Temirtau mentions that “the company has made significant efforts, which have been further strengthened since 2020, to improve safety performance at ArcelorMittal Temirtau’s operations.” But this seems a rather bleak attempt to restore the company image by blaming the “complex geology” of the mines that complicates their operation while the voices have been raised repeatedly about the emergency conditions over the last few years. Workers in the Karaganda region, where the mines are located, continuously tried to improve labour conditions and mentioned the company’s focus on profit with disregard to the miners safety in their appeals.

But mines are not the only dangerous enterprise. Emergency conditions at the factories are widely known, though the company itself never issued any statements mentioning it. In 2018, there were three cases of collapse of roofs and floor slabs at factories, a collapse of the walls of a closed coal storage facility, and a massive explosion at the gas pipeline – all owned by the ArcelorMittal Temirtau and its subsidiaries. In 2019 there was another accident with a deformation and collapsed roof at the metallurgic plant. In 2021, two floor slabs with a total area of 72 square metres collapsed in the forge and press shop of Kurylysmet LLP, a subsidiary of AMT. There were no casualties or injuries, but the conditions and company’s attitude towards workers’ safety have not improved.

ArcelorMittal was continuously fined and disciplined for negligence, failure to comply with safety regulations, failure to submit the mandatory tax declaration, and polluting the environment. In November 2022, after another catastrophe that took lives of 5 workers, the president of Kazakhstan, Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, mentioned that the company has systemic problems, and “despite repeated warnings and instructions from state authorities, the situation is not getting better.”

A search for an inland investor

At the meeting with family members of the miners on October 28 the president of Kazakhstan, Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, said that the government will withdraw from co-operation with ArcelorMittal Temirtau: “I have instructed to stop the investment co-operation with ArcelorMittal Temirtau. This company has turned out to be the worst in our history in terms of cooperation with the government and enterprise.” ArcelorMittal Temirtau issued a statement on October 28 to confirm that the company “recently signed a preliminary agreement for a transaction that will transfer ownership to the Republic of Kazakhstan.”

The government also stated that “subsequent transfer of AMT JSC to other foreign investors is not considered.” However, in a long-term, the state is not planning to invest into the development of the company. “We have no plans for the state to be the owner and invest budget money. We […] must attract a private investor, and they must invest at least 3 billion dollars in the next three years. Without such investments, the enterprise will not be able to develop normally,” prime minister Alikhan Smailov said at the briefing in Majilis. 1.3 billion dollars will have to be invested immediately to ensure “resolvement of industrial and labour safety issues, modernisation of all equipment and expansion of production.”

For now, the company will stay a state property. The president appointed Vadim Basin, Deputy head of Karaganda Region, as head the coal department of ArcelorMittal Temirtau.

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