How Russia lost Kazakhstan

Prior to Russia’s invasion in February 2022, few westerners knew much about Ukraine, and even less about Kazakhstan. We all suffer from Moscow-centred perceptions and the bad habit of equating the Soviet Union with Russia. 

But now we know that Putin is driven by spurious historical theories, in which Ukraine has no right to exist, one needs to ask how they might apply to other ex-Russian provinces. Nowhere is more affected than European Russia’s eastern neighbour, Kazakhstan, which separates Muscovy from China, in the same way that Ukraine and Belarus divide it from the EU and Nato.  

Ukraine is half as big again as France or Germany. But ‘KZ’ dwarfs it. From end to end, Kazakhstan covers the same space as from Portugal to Poland. Yet this vast land contains only 19 to 20 million people. 

Like Ukraine, Kazakhstan has a turbulent and tragic history. The part of Central Asia yet to be called Kazakhstan was conquered by Tsarist Russia in the late 18^th and 19^th centuries.